


I'll Be Watching You

by ColdColdHeart



Series: The Key to Oslov [7]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Arranged Marriage, Brothels, But Things Will Be Fixed, Class Differences, Class Issues, Cliffhangers, Control Issues, Dubious Consent, Dystopia, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Espionage, F/M, Forced Prostitution, Hate Sex, M/M, Past Abuse, Prostitution, Sad Ending, Semi-Requited Lust, Spy or Stalker? You Be the Judge, Stalking, Surveillance, Unrequited Love, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-10-22 14:30:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17664425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdColdHeart/pseuds/ColdColdHeart
Summary: For the past four years, Tilrey has been forging Gersha’s rise to power in the Council while maintaining his own secret connection to the Dissident group the True Hearth. He knows how to keep the dangerous half of his double life separate—and hidden from the man he loves. When Vera Linnett, the granddaughter of the man who molded and tormented him, comes to him with an unusual request, he sees no risk in granting it.But somebody is watching Tilrey. Somebody with a dark obsession and an interest in proving he’s not what he appears.This takes place nearly five years after the epilogue toA Serviceable Boyand about four years afterIt’s Her Party.





	1. Every Step

**Author's Note:**

> This story will run 15-20k and sets up a longer story to follow. I'm trying out some POV shifts here, widening the world, but the next story, _The Trip to Harbour_ , will return to focusing on Gersha, Tilrey, and their relationship. And the threads left dangling at the end of this story _will_ be resolved. (I have a plan ... famous last words, right?) Anyway, thanks so much for reading! Comments of all kinds are helpful, including questions, nitpicks, and suggestions. :)
> 
> Updates are also [on Tumblr](https://welcome-to-oslov.tumblr.com/).

Bors Dartán liked to watch.

That was why he was sitting on a hard maple bench in the high-ceilinged foyer of the gym reserved for Government Sector workers, in the milky light of the giant skylight, waiting for Tilrey Bronn.

The Councillor’s secretary always came to the gym at five on seventh-day. After he worked out, sometimes he went home and sometimes he rambled the city, and the rambling was what interested Bors.

Wearing the gray coverall of a maintenance worker on break, Bors munched slowly on a rice-and-seaweed cake—R1 rations—while pretending to watch the ski race playing out on the cylinder above the hydration kiosk. Because he was impersonating a Laborer, he couldn’t monitor the surveillance feeds on his handheld, but that was part of the fun.

Bors did most of his work in a cavernous, screen-lined room in the bowels of Int/Sec. He could have been there right now, watching for Bronn’s exit from the cam feed opposite the door. But where was the challenge in that? At least once a ten-day, he liked to get out in the field and feel the freezing air on his face. He liked to break his routine.

And he liked Bronn. Well, not the man himself, but Bors liked following him. Keeping an eye on him.

And he was especially glad he was here today, because someone else was waiting for Tilrey Bronn.

Bors had noticed her earlier: a young, slender Upstart with an ethereal cloud of red curls. Her clothes indicated a high-level Admin job in the Sector, and she seemed to be doing more fidgeting than reading the handheld in front of her.

Each time someone entered the foyer, she gave a little start. But she didn’t get up until she saw the tall, broad-shouldered figure that Bors, too, immediately recognized.

He watched them from the corner of his eye, keeping his face toward the cylinder. Bronn seemed to know the young Upstart; he paused to chat, gym bag slung over his shoulder.

If he were down in Int/Sec, watching via surveillance, Bors could have zoomed in on their faces and read their expressions, perhaps even picked up their words with an ambient mic. He’d review the footage later, but for now he had to make do with body language.

The Upstart’s forward lean and hunched shoulders suggested boldness and supplication at the same time. She was gesturing too much, asking or proposing something, while Bronn listened with his usual relaxed yet flawless posture. The former kettle boy was good at appearing lazy while staying alert. Bors admired that; it would have been a useful trait in his profession, too.

The young Upstart’s mouth turned down, suggesting a fear of rejection, before she leaned forward and spoke again.

Ordinarily, Bors would have been surprised to see an Upstart defer to a Laborer. But he’d been watching Tilrey Bronn for four years, ever since he’d run the undercover op that exposed Ranek Egil as a Dissident, and he was well aware of the effect the boy had on even high-named Strutters.

That was one reason Bors was convinced that watching Bronn would eventually bear fruit, though his mentor, Niko Karishkov, considered it a waste of time. A smart Drudge with too much influence is like a missile that’s been hacked to fire on its own side.

Bronn and the Upstart were moving now, walking together toward the coldroom vestibule. As they passed him, Bors studied the remains of dinner in his lap. Four years ago, Bronn’s patron, Councillor Gádden, had made inquiries about Bors, so there was a chance Bronn knew his face.

Luckily for Bors, he was blessed with the kind of face no one notices or remembers—neither old nor young, neither fat nor thin, neither pleasant nor unpleasant to look at. His only distinguishing characteristics were his intense pallor—with baby-fine hair to match—and the large, round glasses he wore in Int/Sec to cut the screen glare. Without the latter, he easily disappeared in a crowd.

He rose, swept the crumbs and packaging into his duffel, and followed the pair at a safe distance. Before entering the coldroom, he paused, giving them time to suit up for the weather.

When he stepped in, they were already gone. Not bothering with his coat, Bors burst through the seal into the unbearable cold of a winter evening, just in time to see them heading for the western tram platform. Shivering, with adrenaline quickening his heart and bringing tears to his eyes, he ducked back inside, shoved on his boots, grabbed his coat, and hurried out again.

On the heated platform, he pulled the heavy hood close around his face, making himself look like just another menial headed out to repair a water heater or solar panel array. Bronn and the Upstart woman stood a few feet in front of him, watching snow glitter in the halogen lights as it drifted down from an oddly violet sky. The woman pointed upward, as if appreciating the sight, and Bronn nodded.

Imagine caring about such things! Bors barely noticed anymore whether it was cloudy or clear, winter or summer. Maybe that was a sign he needed to get out more.

The tram drifted to the edge of the platform, and everyone filed inside. As he stepped across the hand’s-width gap between the walkway and the bullet-shaped vessel, Bors caught a glimpse of the snow ten stories below. The base of his spine prickled. He hated heights and dreamed of falling; when he was a kid, his mother had coaxed him across these gaps.

Now he could manage them himself, like everything else. He stepped on, took a standing position at the opposite end of the car, and watched as his targets seated themselves.

Those two had fucked. They were keeping their distance now, wary of each other, but the way the woman arched her back and pointed her knees toward Bronn told Bors she’d been intimate with him before and wanted to be again. As soon as he could use his handheld, he’d pull a surveillance clip and run facial recog on her, but for now it was fun to exercise his powers of observation.

The tram wound around the inner ring and into Ring Two, stopping at last-century buildings whose higher levels were inhabited by Sector bureaucrats, engineers, and programmers. They must be going to her place; Bronn never brought his conquests home to the apartment he shared with his Councillor lover.

Not that there were many conquests these days. Bronn saw the same people over and over: Councillor Lindblom and her husband, Councillor Linbeck; a smattering of Council swing voters; and a married Laborer couple, Bror Birun and Mirella Tunstadt. Birun was a friend from Bronn’s kettle boy days, and, as far as Bors could make out, the three of them had a jolly occasional ménage going. Neither Birun or Tunstadt was on the Int/Sec watch-list, and the whole thing would have seemed innocent if the three hadn’t met up in a different spot every couple of weeks, seldom using the same place twice.

That was evidence of trying to hide something, in Bors’s view. He was well aware that both Sirkelund Gelmedyn, the head of Int/Sec, and Karishkov thought he was being silly to surveille Bronn this way. “He’s not a shirker, just a nasty little tart living way above his station” was how Karishkov put it.

They hadn’t even cared when he’d presented them with a fifty-page report on the highly suspect interactions between Bronn and the exiled traitor Ranek Egil, including an unorthodox, off-the-books interrogation—Egil had hidden it well, but not well enough—and a series of meetings in vacant buildings over nearly three years.

Bors had been sure Karishkov would want to arrest Bronn on the spot, since Karishkov was the one who’d enlisted Bors to entrap Egil in the first place. But the Councillor and the director declared there was no cause for action. “The boy and Egil were fucking,” Karishkov had said with a shrug. “Gádden and Egil go way back, remember? The Councillor was sharing the boy with his friend. It’s normal.”

That flip dismissal had made Bors want to crawl out of his skin. No, he didn’t know what was “normal” for Councillors and their friends, not being on that Level. But he did have enough experience to know that Dissidents didn’t work alone.

Director Gelmedyn had patronized and dismissed him, too, saying, “Bronn doesn’t belong to the class of Drudge where we see shirker activity. With his privileged lifestyle, what does he have to rebel against?”

“Look at his E-squared scores,” Bors had objected, calling up another record. “Ninety-ninth percentile for Laborers; that’s a _proven_ risk factor for Dissident activity.”

His two superiors shared a glance, one that Bors had seen too many times before, and then Karishkov said, “You’re welcome to keep on him, Borsha. I just don’t think you’ll find much. Verán used to say the boy was slow at everything except what he could do on his knees.”

Remembering the conversation, Bors tasted bile. He believed in complete obedience to his superiors, but on that occasion he’d nearly spat in Karishkov’s face and slammed the door on his way out. He didn’t like to admit it even to himself, but high-named Strutters could be fucking obtuse.

The tram slowed, pulling toward a platform, and all his senses went taut again as the Upstart woman rose. When the tram docked, Bronn followed her outside. Bors trailed them at a distance of several meters, head down.

The tram crowd flooded into the building’s tenth-floor lobby, where it quickly dispersed to take stairways and lifts in several directions. Bronn and the Upstart hiked up four stories to the enclosed walkway connecting the building to its neighbors. Though this was an Upstart residential area, the knots of commuters made it easy for Bors to blend in. The woman had let her hood fall, and he kept his eyes on her flame-bright hair.

He couldn’t blame Karishkov and Gelmedyn, both born in the upper echelon, for their inability to estimate Laborers at their true worth. An intelligent, dangerous, ideologically motivated Drudge was outside their experience and hence outside their conception.

Bors knew better, because he had been born a Laborer. Unlike the overwhelming majority of his peers, he’d successfully applied for Upstart status at age eighteen and been Raised, which gave him a view from both sides.

And Bors would never make the mistake of underestimating a Laborer, or a Skeinsha, or a whore.

The walkway branched off, and Bronn and the woman took the offshoot into a building where the white corridors were inconveniently narrow. Rather than risk following, Bors paused, scanned the area, and pulled out his handheld.

He knew the city like the back of his hand; in thirty seconds he’d accessed the cam network and found the building, the floor, the hallway. There they were again on his screen, the woman leading the way. They took a lift up, and then they were in another featureless corridor, disappearing into a door marked 23B-15.

Bors stowed his handheld, seated himself in the building’s foyer, and took out the remains of his dinner. He would give them an hour. If one or both didn’t emerge by then, he’d do the rest of the surveillance the usual way, from his Int/Sec basement lair. He made himself a bet based on the way the Upstart had stood back to let Bronn go first, and Bronn had insisted she do so: two to one Bronn would spend the night.

Maybe it all meant nothing. Maybe Karishkov and Gelmedyn were right, and he was wasting his time and being a sneaky little voyeur. But in Bors’s universe, no one was above suspicion, and he had a feeling about this. Sooner or later, he’d catch Tilrey Bronn red-handed.


	2. Every Bond

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering who Vera Linnett is, she was introduced in the "Marinating" chapter of _A Serviceable Boy_ , where Tilrey kept his distance from her because her infatuation had already gotten him in trouble. And now she's back. Thanks for reading! <3

Vera Linnett shut the door of her apartment and pressed her back against it. Not that she’d actually try to keep him from leaving if he wanted to, but—

“I know,” she said, as Tilrey hung his coat in the closet and tugged off his boots. “I know you think I’m going to start with all that again, but I swear, I’m not.”

Without speaking, Tilrey held out his hand, and she pulled off her own heavy coat and scarf and gave them to him to put away. “It’s been what, seven years since we last talked?”

He nodded and took her boots.

“And ten years since . . . well, anyway, like I said on the tram, I’ve buckled down. I want to stand for Council election within five years. And I’m married.”

Again he nodded, unsmiling. “To Tollsha Linden. I heard, Fir’n. That’s quite an alliance you’ve made.”

“It was Mother’s idea. She thinks linking ourselves with the Lindens is our way back to power—that and the committee she heads, and your Fir Gádden’s support.” Green hells, she sounded like a child, babbling on about her mother’s plans. Why was she always undercutting her own authority?

She ushered Tilrey into the living room, trying to act like a proper high Upstart, like an adult for once. She was almost sorry she’d already asked him not to call her Fir’n, though formality would seem absurd once she explained why he was here. Wasn’t it already absurd?

Tilrey sat on the couch, taking up space with that languid confidence Vera admired whenever she saw him. Mostly these days she just caught glimpses in the Sector, but a few times, years ago, she’d followed him. From the gym to the Café to his Councillor’s apartment; from the Sector to his Laborer dorm in an outer ring. She wasn’t proud of it, but sometimes you just needed a glimpse to keep you going.

As she stepped into the kitchenette to heat the water, Tilrey said, “You don’t wear that purple-and-gold scarf anymore.”

Vera’s breath caught. “Verdant hells, no. I told you why I wore it, didn’t I?”

“Something about being a Hargist and rebelling against the system.”

“It was silly.” She imitated her mother’s high-handed tone as she measured leaves into the pot. “I got in with this group of malcontents—not actual Dissenters. We thought we were above politics. We showed our displeasure with the status quo by wearing outrageous colors and sometimes even masquerading as Levels above or below ours. We called it ‘seeding chaos.’ We’d dare each other to stand out in the cold, even go to ground level and _walk_ from building to building.”

She was breathing too quickly, probably sounding frantic. She reminded herself it was all in the past, a funny story to tell. “One of my friends died from exposure, actually. He tried to walk right out of the city, just to show he could, and he . . . he . . .”

When she looked up, Tilrey’s eyes were on her—not shocked or disgusted, as she half expected, but calm and steady. “I’m sorry, Vera. Was he a good friend of yours?”

_No one should be sorry about your damned friend. It’s an unworthy death._ Her father had said that, and she’d wanted to shout at him, to ask what kind of person could be so unfeeling, but she already knew the answer. People like her parents, pillars of the Republic, couldn’t afford to care about people who wanted to topple it all.

“Not really,” she said. “None of them were real friends, just people I hung out with to piss off my parents. My younger brother got involved, too, and—anyway, it was a mess.”

She hoped Tilrey hadn’t heard the whispers about Valgund. It was her fault her brother was in moral rehab instead of working in the Sector like her.

There was only commiseration on Tilrey’s face as he said again, “I’m sorry. I always admired you, you know. The first time we met, you made these grand critiques of the system using words I’d never heard.”

“Yes, well.” Vera grabbed the pot and two tumblers and went in to join him. “I was a silly girl, sheltered and spoiled, and you know how that turned out. I actually feel awful about how I talked back then, how I treated you. So full of myself.”

She poured the tea, slopping it a little, and sat down at a respectable distance, trying to ignore the masculine energy radiating off his body in waves. She could practically see the magnetism in the air between them, seething and golden and—no, no, that was all over.

Nearly thirty was way too old to be pining over someone who’d never been a remotely appropriate match. Vera was old enough now to understand that, however knee-weakeningly beautiful Tilrey might be, she was the Upstart, the one with the power. She’d found ways to fuck up his life _twice_ , and she wouldn’t do it again.

He was watching her with a slight furrow in his otherwise smooth brow, as if detecting the turmoil inside her. “That’s all in the past, Fir’n. I have a good situation now.”

_With Gersha Gádden._ Vera couldn’t repress a prickle of jealousy. “Yes, I’m so glad about that. You were always so bright, and Mother says you’re invaluable to Gersha.”

Tilrey picked up his tea and blew on it. When his eyes met Vera’s again, as if to say, _And now, Fir’n?_ , their sky-blue was so intense she had to look away.

“I,” she said. “This is going to sound ridiculous. But I want you to understand I’m not, uh—well, I’m not in love with you. Anymore. If I ever was. I think I talked a lot about passion and destiny back then; it was part of my rebellious phase, and—”

He was inches from her suddenly, his hand reaching out to right her tipping tumbler, the faint musk of his skin stealing her breath. “Vera. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Fine.” She laughed nervously and backed away from him. _Is his hair longer? I love when it flops in his eyes. I love how his eyes catch the light, and how he looks up through his lashes, and that gritty rumble in his voice when he’s not sure about something, and—STOP._

She shoved her own wild hair out of her eyes. Might as well stop wasting his time and say it. “I mean, I am fine, really. I was dead set against the marriage at first, but I got to know Tollsha, and we don’t have much in common, temperamentally, but he’s . . . decent.”

“I know Tollsha a bit, Fir’n. He used to try to protect me from his uncle.”

The memory of seeing Tilrey with a black eye made Vera wince and avert her eyes. “I know he was hard on you—the uncle, I mean.” Tollsha’s uncle was the late Edmond Linden, former General Magistrate of the Republic. “I’m so sorry. I always wanted to do something to help, but—”

“You couldn’t,” Tilrey said almost sharply. He retreated to his end of the couch and drank his tea. “The elder Linden was just a cruel, failing, frustrated old man. So, you’re married. Does that have something to do with why I’m here?”

He’d given her an opening, and now she had to take it. Spit it out. “We’re trying to have a child, Tollsha and I. It’s time. The problem is, I can’t, um . . . well, Tollsha says I’m not responsive.” She couldn’t look at him. “Because I can’t come with him. And he refuses to do it if I’m not enjoying it. He says it’s important to him.”

Tilrey snorted, making her wince again. “That sounds like Tollsha.”

“Do you, uh . . .” She was _not_ going to ask what he knew, if anything, about her husband’s sexual proclivities.

“Oh, Tollsha’s mainly into women.” He leaned back, looking thoughtful. “He used to brag about giving girls a good time. He’s the type who sees getting his partner off as proof of his manhood.”

“Which isn’t a bad thing,” Vera said hastily.

“Not at all, assuming you’re attracted to him. Are you?”

An image of her husband flitted before Vera’s eyes. With his butter-blond hair, pouty upper lip, and over-ripe athlete’s body, Bertholdt Linden was handsome, she supposed, and good-natured enough. But he was seven years her senior, and his lordly confidence and limited aspirations made her want to scream. In Tollsha’s view, culinary and sexual gratifications were second only to serving the Republic in the list of priorities, and he considered himself an expert on all three. He never questioned anything.

“I’ve tried,” she said.

Tilrey chuckled. “It doesn’t work that way.”

Now or never. Vera stared at her feet. “I’m not blaming Tollsha. He’s tried, too, but the problem is me _._ I’ve been with men and women, a decent number, but I’ve only ever actually come with, well . . . with you.”

Her face burned. Would he be cocky about it, or accuse her of being in love with him all over again? She counted to ten, barely breathing, before Tilrey spoke—sounding not triumphant, as she’d feared, but still thoughtful.

“I thought you didn’t, actually. That time ten years ago—I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Vera said in a small voice, “Whatever you did worked.”

“You’re talking about the second time here in Redda?”

She nodded. How could he not remember every second of that afternoon? She’d gone over it in her mind till it resembled an ancient book with crumbling pages, not a sentence intact.

Tilrey was staring into space. “I guess for me that day was kind of eclipsed by what came after.”

“Yes.” Did they have to discuss that?

“I didn’t think you’d ever want to speak to me again.”

Vera looked up too sharply, nearly spilling her tea once more. “You can’t think that. You shouldn’t think that. It wasn’t your fault!”

“But that’s just the point, right?”

Vera clenched her jaw and tried to focus on the snow that now battered the unshuttered window, flakes fleetingly visible inside the reflection of the room. Against her will, the memory came to life again.

***

She was twenty years old, still at University, and she was in love. Her grandfather had invited her to dine at the Restaurant with him.

Throughout her childhood, Vera had looked forward to these dinners where Grandpa talked with her as if she were an adult, chewing over heady ideas and listening to her with great seriousness. Unlike her parents, Magistrate Linnett was shocked by nothing she said. Her pointed questions about the logic of this or that rule failed to faze him. The way Oslovs lived, he’d told her once, was just one of many possibilities, “not decreed by any god on high, whatever they tell you at school.”

Tonight Vera was eager to engage her grandfather in a debate about Hargism—perhaps to show off for him a little. She stepped into the Restaurant’s hothouse warmth, breathing in spices unknown in everyday cuisine. Her grandfather was seated at his usual booth in the back, against the ribbed, floor-length windows with their exotic décor of potted tropical plants, and beside him—

Vera stopped short. _You aren’t supposed to be here_.

She knew, of course, that Tilrey lived with her grandfather, that he slept with her grandfather. But she did her best to block that out when _she_ was in bed with Tilrey, as she’d been five days ago, experiencing the best three hours of her life. Besides, her grandfather had always been discreet, keeping that part of his private life away from his family. To see them together was _wrong._

Grandpa Malsha rose to greet her, as affectionate as ever, but she had eyes only for Tilrey. Dressed in the Upstart clothes that advertised his kettle boy status, he didn’t acknowledge her arrival, just gazed out the window with a sullen expression. It was a world away from how he’d been in her bedroom—calm and confident, with strong arms and an easy laugh.

Something was very wrong. Vera settled on the banquette opposite them, her face burning.

Her grandfather sat back down, too, and wrapped his arm around Tilrey’s waist, drawing him close. Vera shivered with repulsion. For a split second, Tilrey did, too, but he didn’t pull away or raise his eyes. If he hadn’t looked so unhappy, she might have thought he was drugged into numbness.

Malsha said softly, “You’ve met my piece?”

Vera flinched at the word, staring at the oak tabletop. “Yes.”

“Yes. I imagine you’re confused. But so was I, when I learned you’d stolen something that belongs to me.”

The server picked that moment to arrive. Vera sat in agonizing silence, unable to look at her lover, while Malsha Linnett ordered eel rolls and raw salmon and rice cakes and hard cider and real Harbourer cheese and pickled sea urchin and mixed seaweed and some Harbourer-style casserole of which he requested a detailed description. If those moments in bed with Tilrey had been the best of her life, Vera decided, these moments were the worst.

When the server had been dispatched, the old man leaned back and placed his right hand, tightly entwining Tilrey’s, on the table. “I hope you’ll be understanding, Vera,” he said. “I’ve never had cause to reprove you before. But there are boundaries, and I’m afraid you’ve crossed one.”

Someone knew; someone had told him. Surely not Tilrey! She sputtered something that made no sense.

Her grandfather replied smoothly, “Yes, indeed, there was a witness. A concerned bystander who told my driver, who followed you on a second occasion. But that’s not the point, Vera. If you hadn’t known you were doing wrong, you wouldn’t have done it on the sly. You would have come right out and asked me.”

“Asked you what?” She glanced wildly at Tilrey; she couldn’t help it. Why wasn’t he speaking up? Why wasn’t he explaining that he _chose_ to spend his free time with her because he . . . well, he liked her at least, didn’t he?

Tilrey’s lower lip was between his teeth, his eyes down. He didn’t wrench his hand from Malsha’s.

“You didn’t ask me if you could use the boy,” said her grandfather, still in that gentle voice. “I would have said no, because it goes against his proper function as political currency, not to mention it’s downright unsavory, and rather absurd, for us to share him. But I wouldn’t have been offended by the request. I know how tempting he is.”

Vera was beginning to feel queasy. Being a Linnett, though, she managed to gather a certain icy dignity. “I would never ask to ‘use’ him. He’s a free citizen and not—not something that belongs to you.”

Malsha Linnett smiled the way he always did when she showed off her knowledge, but this time she glimpsed his teeth. “I applaud your spirit, my dear, and your idealism. But there are certain realities one must face.” He stroked Tilrey’s captive hand. “No, I don’t own him. But, as his patron and protector, I do own his _time_ , which is quite valuable, and it’s in my interest to control access to that. Now, can you offer me any good reason why you should steal my boy’s time?”

Vera was not prepared. The two times they’d gone to her room and shed their clothes and made love—her preferred phrase—she’d told herself a little story in which Tilrey was a fellow student, or perhaps a Laborer working in the admin office. She hadn’t wanted to _think_ about this.

If only Tilrey would speak up and explain. Say something smart and witty. Remind her how special he was. But he just sat there in her grandfather’s grip looking dazed and wretched, as if he really _were_ a thing.

Vera stumbled over her words. “We’re friends. I knew him before you even did. Before he was your kettle boy.”

Malsha looked stern. “Yes, because you snuck into the room where your father was keeping him. That was partly your father’s mistake, I suppose, and partly yours. Either way, the one who suffered for it was poor Rishka, because your father insisted on punishing him for what happened next. What kind of friend are you, Vera, if you get him in trouble and cause him pain?”

Tilrey’s mouth twisted, and the knuckles of his trapped hand went white, but he still didn’t speak.

Vera wanted to protest, but she couldn’t deny the logic. She’d been explicitly forbidden to enter that room in the Southern Range, forbidden to talk to the frightened Skeinsha boy her father had brought home as a gift for her grandfather. (“It’s a political thing,” her mother had explained, clearly uncomfortable with the whole business.) But Vera _had_ entered that room, and she’d talked to Tilrey and kissed him and fooled around, and he alone had been punished for the things they chose to do together.

She’d been living in a fantasy where the two of them could freely choose each other, and she saw now that the choices were all on her side, along with the responsibility. Wrong or right, that was how things were.

“Please don’t punish him this time,” she said. “Not for this. It was my fault.”

Malsha relaxed his grip on Tilrey’s hand. “Believe me, I don’t want to. But I can’t punish _you_ , and how else can I stop this from happening again?”

“It won’t!” Images and sensations jumbled in Vera’s brain. She saw the two sunlit afternoons they’d tangled in her bed; she heard Tilrey’s coaxing murmurs; she felt his skin sliding against hers, smelled the sharp scent of his sweat. The softness of his hair, his teasing tongue, his cock burgeoning against her thigh, the way she’d arced her back and left her body for an endless moment—it had all felt so right, but it had been wrong. _It can never happen again. Never._

“I promise you,” she pleaded with her grandfather. “It was my idea, all mine, not his. I practically _forced_ him. I won’t touch him again. Ever.”

She didn’t know what “punishment” might entail, and she didn’t dare ask. It was unbearable to think of Tilrey being hurt and unbearable to think of her grandfather hurting anyone. “I swear,” she said. “Please don’t make him suffer because I’m spoiled and selfish.”

She _had_ been selfish. When they met by chance in the Library and she proposed going back to her room, Tilrey had hesitated. Not for long, but long enough. Then, in her room, she was the one who’d touched him first, who’d kissed him, who’d begged him to take her virginity. And again he’d obeyed.

Before Vera could continue with her begging, the server brought glasses and cider. Her grandfather released Tilrey’s hand and poured for the three of them. Vera saw it all through the tears that rolled down her cheeks.

When the server was gone, Malsha said, “Drink up, my dear. This isn’t worth all the theatrics. Since you’ve acknowledged your mistake, the boy won’t be punished.”

Vera gulped and swabbed at the tears with her napkin, feeling lighter and heavier at once. “You promise?”

“I promise,” said Malsha solemnly. “And I understand if you’d prefer to leave now.”

Released, Vera sprang to her feet; all she wanted was to put miles between herself and the two of them.

But she was weak. Before turning to leave that hateful room, she looked back once, just once, at the man she had until tonight considered her lover.

For the first time, his eyes were on her—his beautiful layered, intelligent eyes—and they were shining with his own tears, and they were speaking to her. For years afterward, Vera would try to tell herself Tilrey’s silent message had been _Thank you._ But she had a feeling it was more along the lines of _Damn you._

***

“It was a bad time,” Tilrey said. “For both of us.” He’d closed the distance between them and was holding her hand, but there was nothing amorous about his grip. Vera realized she was shaking.

“I didn’t do the right thing, did I?” she said. “I should have insisted Malsha let you speak for yourself. But you _wouldn’t_ speak.”

“Before you got there, he told me that if I said a single word to you, if I even looked at you, I would regret it.”

Vera nodded, sad but unsurprised. For years, even after her grandfather had been exiled as a traitor, she’d wanted to remember him as the man she’d adored as a child. “I should have told him off. Done something.”

Tilrey released her hand. “What would be the point? You know, Fir’n, I was a silly boy myself back then, and I almost thought I was in love with you. I think Malsha knew it, too. He did us both a favor by nipping those feelings in the bud.”

Vera didn’t think it was a favor, but she said, “Yes.”

“And now you come to me because you want . . . well, what do you want?”

Shame rose in Vera’s throat and choked her. But when he looked straight at her and said, “You want to be taught how to come so you can do it with your husband,” she nodded.

After a moment, Tilrey smiled radiantly. There was no malice in his eyes. “I guess I’ve developed a reputation as some kind of sex doctor.”

Vera grinned back because if she didn’t, she might cry. “I know how it sounds. But it would be only a few times, and only . . . well, sex. I wouldn’t ask anything else from you. And I can give you something in return. My allegiance to Gersha’s faction when I enter the Council, and maybe Tollsha’s allegiance, too. I think he’d be open to leaving the Island Party if I just gave him a push.”

_I want more than that. So much more._ But she was past her days of making reckless demands on anyone.

Tilrey’s smile didn’t fade; it was starting to edge into mania. “And if you gave Tollsha a mind-blowing orgasm and the satisfaction of knowing he’d given _you_ one, I’m sure that would put him in the right mood for a little political conversion. Yes, Vera. You’ve come to the right place. I can help with this sort of thing.”


	3. Every Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bors gets even creepier.

Bors was pacing the thread-bare carpet of Int/Sec Director Gelmedyn’s office; he couldn’t help it. “Just two ten-days, Fir’n Director. That’s all I ask.”

“I cannot authorize you to surveille Vera Linnett’s apartment,” said Gelmedyn. A tiny husk of a woman with the bleary eyes of a night creature, she appeared to be examining her ramen for defects, lifting and sifting each spoonful before swallowing it. “Not without much better cause, anyway. She and Bronn are probably just fucking.”

“But her record!” Bors pointed at the director’s screen; she’d barely scanned it. “For five whole years, from secondary through University, Vera Linnett and her brother were part of a band of Hargists. They wore incorrect clothing, defaced walls and buildings, exposed themselves to the cold!”

Gelmedyn’s face was half in shadow, because whoever had designed her two-story office had given it yellow mood lighting, in striking contrast to the acres of merciless fluorescence outside. But Bors thought she rolled her eyes as she said, “We don’t concern ourselves with Hargists here. Bored kids acting out aren’t Dissidents.”

“But sometimes Hargists become Taugists, who have a historical association with acts of terrorism.” Bors searched the article he wanted on his handheld—then put it down, realizing she didn’t care. No one ever cared about his research. No one _listened_ to him, and he’d been staring at screens for the past twenty-four hours and his eyes hurt despite the glare-blocking glasses and he just needed this _one thing_.

He tried to overwhelm her with facts. “And Hargism is hardly a harmless past-time. Eight years ago, Valgund Linnett—Vera’s kid brother—and his friend Angar Lindahl walked three miles straight out of the city. Lindahl died of hypothermia. Valgund Linnett remains in moral rehab to this day.”

Gelmedyn continued to peruse her soup. “That’s a misfortune for the Linnett family, but Vera’s had a clean record ever since. I don’t see anything odd or untoward about her having a little dalliance with her grandfather’s former kettle boy. Frankly, I don’t understand your obsession with Tilrey Bronn.”

“Ranek Egil had long, unmonitored conversations with him! Egil helped Celinda Valde escape, probably to Harbour! Bronn and Valde were friends!”

Bors had to struggle not to shout in his eagerness to shatter the director’s impassivity. She refused to pay attention to any lead that wasn’t part of a long-standing investigation, especially when it came from him. And if he did shout, she would just advise him to get some sleep or some exercise with that patronizing smile that said, _Silly Drudge._

Part of being an Upstart was keeping your emotions under control at all times, and he _would._

“I’m not ‘obsessed,’” he finished, knowing it was time to cut his losses and go. “I just think there’s ample reason for concern. And if you won’t sign off on audio surveillance simply because the suspect is named Linnett . . .”

He let the words hang in the air like a threat, but Gelmedyn snorted. “Are you accusing me of favoring the high names? I couldn’t care less that we’re talking about a Linnett, Borsha. You’re an exemplary analyst, but sometimes you don’t know your boundaries. Now, please, go home and get some sleep.”

Bors was shaking as he bobbed his head and walked back across the carpet to the door. “Yes, Fir’n Director.”

The door swung behind him, and abruptly he was back in the cavernous, windowless, painfully bright room that constituted most of Int/Sec, surrounded by humming voices, buzzing printers, and screens.

He crossed the central cubicle farm in a daze and veered off into his usual domain: the glittering room covered floor-to-ceiling with surveillance monitors, which everyone called the Blinding Tank. The screens made his eyelids twitch, and he rubbed them, averting his gaze as he trudged to his desk to gather his belongings.

He knew what he’d see on the screens: passages, foyers, tram interiors, cafeterias, common rooms, bathrooms, libraries—virtually every public space in the city. All over Redda, Upstarts and Laborers were going about their business, tracing gleaming paths from monitor to monitor that were probably innocent but _might_ not be.

When Bors was freshly rested and caffeinated, the sight energized him; he imagined he could process terabytes of visual data at a glance and spot the one thing out of place. Right now, though, he wanted to hide from it all. He didn’t even care whether Bronn was back at Linnett’s place tonight. (Bors had lost his bet with himself about that first night, as Bronn had gone home after a few hours, but since then the two of them had had two overnights together.)

Kranik, part of the night screen-minder crew, turned to flash a pretty, mocking smile at Bors. “Who’ve you been after today, Fir Dartán? The kettle boy again?”

“That’s none of your affair,” Bors said severely, gathering his tablet and notes. The word on Kranik was that he’d blow anyone for a vial of sap, which made his lack of respect all the more galling.

Everyone who worked here, from the director to the cleaning crew, knew Bors had been born a Drudge, and most of them probably knew how he’d managed to be Raised. Not through exceptional talent or achievement, as Whyberg decreed, but because his mother happened to be a very pretty woman who was very dear to a high Admin who cared very much about making her happy. And so, although Bors’s test scores were no better than eighty-five percentile among Laborer-born children, he had received the Notification coveted by all of them. And he would spend the rest of his life being second-guessed, envied, and despised.

He didn’t regret being Raised—how could he regret anything that allowed him to be of greater service to the Republic? But he glowered fiercely at Kranik and said, “While you sit here chatting with me, someone on one of your screens could be passing a message that leads to the destruction of a supply depot.”

This was a worst-case scenario; no shirkers had actually blown up anything for nearly a quarter-century. But Kranik smiled again, showing off his full, cock-sucking lips and his dimples, and said, “Of course, Fir. On it, Fir.”

Bors was tired, so he let the thinly veiled sarcasm go.

On his way out, one of the Thurskein analysts rose from her cubicle and intercepted him. “Fir Dartán?”

Her name was Something Glommer; they’d had lunch together a few times, and she’d talked of nothing but silly office gossip. “Yes?” he asked impatiently.

“You’re still looking into the Bronn boy, right? The Councillor’s secretary?”

He came awake all at once. “That’s still active, yes.”

“His name came up in one of my subordinate’s field debriefings.” Glommer handed him a print-out. “One of our assets happened to mention knowing him—bragged about his inside track on Councillor Gádden. Bronn visits Sector Six because his mother’s the Supervisor there, you know.”

Bors did know, and he was tempted to snap at Glommer for wasting his time. “And did the asset say Bronn was doing anything suspicious?”

Glommer stiffened at his tone. “No, but my subordinate didn’t know the right questions to ask. I thought you might want to talk to the asset yourself. You’ll see his data there—Sollentaal, Malkien. We used to use him to keep an eye on Supervisor Fernei, and lately he’s been helpful in rooting out nests of Hargist schoolboys and that sort of thing. I’m going down to ’Skein in two ten-days, if you’d like to tag along and get a face-to-face.”

 _What’s the point?_ But Bors nodded, because no lead was too slight to pass up. “Send me your travel data. I’ll make my own arrangements.”

He nearly fell asleep on the tram, only waking before his stop because some idiot raw-boned factory drone, telling his friends a story, elbowed him in the ribs. Bors rose, rubbing his martyred eyes again, and followed the crowd onto the platform. He lived on the outer edge of Ring Four, where Upstart and Laborer apartment buildings overlapped, but he didn’t mind. An inner Ring wouldn’t have felt like home.

One of the strangers on the platform made him pause for a second look. Narrow, dark face; keen eyes— _Ranek Egil_? No, the jawline was different, and anyway, Egil had gone to the Wastes four years ago. Bors needed to stop seeing him everywhere.

It would have been easier if he hadn’t had to get so close to Egil to trap him. He remembered their first encounter all too well, because it was a day like this one, when Bors was frustrated with everything.

He was not quite twenty-five then, and not yet an analyst; they still had him on screen-minding duty with the Laborers. Egil stopped in the Blinding Tank to order surveillance on a suspect, and Bors treated the junior interrogator with the appropriate deference, suggesting further cam checkpoints that Egil hadn’t considered.

On his way out, Egil said, “You should put in a request for promotion, lad. You’re too smart to be burning your eyes out all day.”

Bors bristled, too aware that a born-Upstart his age would have been promoted by now. “I supervise my quadrant of Drudge minders,” he said, as if that made a difference.

“It’s because of your birth-Level, isn’t it?” Egil glanced around quickly, then lowered his voice. “Sometimes it’s shameful how much these things matter.”

Bors’s temples were starting to throb. “I don’t question the decisions of my superiors.”

“Of course not.” The interrogator smiled disarmingly, as if to take the sting out of his earlier words. “I’m sure your merit will be recognized soon enough.”

Later on, when Bors reported Egil to the director and Karishkov, he would claim to have only a short acquaintance with the traitor. That was a lie, one of very few he’d ever allowed himself.

In fact, he and Egil had been talking by then for nearly a year, usually in the dead of night when Bors was the only person minding his designated screen quadrant. Egil also kept late hours. He’d drop by with tea or rice cakes and praise Bors’s work ethic, and then he’d lean on Bors’s desk and chat.

Bors was glad of the company. At first, he couldn’t tell Egil was tempting him toward sedition, because the interrogator knew how to play on Bors’s weaknesses. His favorite tack was insisting that Bors shouldn’t be ashamed of the manner in which he’d been Raised.

“So, family connections were involved. Do you know how many of the Upstarts in this Sector got where they are because of family connections? If you emptied the building of everybody who has reasons for being here besides personal merit—” Egil made a sweeping gesture with his tea mug— “we wouldn’t have a government.”

He told Bors stories of high-named Admins and other officials who didn’t deserve their positions—barely functioning sap addicts, people who couldn’t do simple math, people who visited the gym and the Sanctioned Brothel during work hours. Bors listened open-mouthed.

Then one day Egil showed his hand by saying, “Fellows like us can’t be kept down forever.” It was the presumption of the “us”—as if they were the same!—that made Bors realize Egil was working on him, chipping away at his trust in the system. The man was a dangerous renegade.

He still needed proof, so he watched and waited and let Egil court him ideologically. He expressed outrage when Egil expected it and pretended to be cautiously receptive to reform. Meanwhile, he found ways to chat surreptitiously with some of Egil’s Laborer subordinates. That was how he learned that Tilrey Bronn had been interrogated off the books, and that the video of Celinda Valde’s exile had mysteriously vanished.

Once he’d collected all the evidence, Bors took it to Karishkov, and things proceeded quickly from there. Wearing a wire, Bors coaxed Egil into admitting he had intimate knowledge of a Dissident movement, if not direct contact with one. _Laborers are starting to figure out that following the rules isn’t in their interest. Do you realize how many of our assets in Thurskein and Karkei are actually working with shirkers?_ That one rhetorical question was enough to condemn the man.

But it had all happened way too fast, and Karishkov and the director had bungled it. Too eager to punish Egil himself, they’d insisted that his claims about shirkers lurking in the cities were hot air, pure fantasy. And Egil’s precious intel—he obviously knew more than he’d said—had disappeared into the Wastes with him.

As he pressed his index finger to the keypad outside his apartment, Bors admitted to himself that sometimes he missed Egil for reasons besides that intel. Most of his fellow Upstarts treated him like his Laborer blood was a communicable disease. Ranek had never done that.

It was a strategic show of equality, Bors reminded himself, not the real thing. Upstarts, even when they were shirkers, would never see the Drudge-born as their equals. Maybe Egil had spoken to Tilrey Bronn the exact same way.

The one-room apartment stank of cleaning fluid and boasted few personal touches. Bors rarely did more than sleep there. And he should sleep now, but the new Thurskein lead and the Egil lookalike had set his nerves jangling.

He changed into sweats, brushed and flossed his teeth, and put drops in his eyes. He drank a powder that was supposed to relieve stress. Then he turned off all the lights and brought his handheld to bed.

His shadow stretched across the ceiling in the eerie screen-light as he opened an encrypted folder. He hit “Montage 1,” and a video file opened, spilling images over the screen.

They were short clips from surveillance footage that Bors had copied and pasted together. Here was the corridor outside Councillor Gádden’s office in the Sector. The door opened. As the Councillor stepped out, he paused to ruffle the hair of his secretary, who was half-visible through the cracked door—a pair of shoulders and a grin.

Here was the R11 garage near the Sector roof. A car stood idling, trembling and steaming. Bronn opened the door for the Councillor and steered him inside with an almost possessive hand on the small of his back.

Since Bors had no authorization to surveille Bronn in private spaces, the clips of his interactions with the Councillor were all chaste. A hand-clasp outside the steam room; a kiss on the cheek in the Restaurant. Nothing they wouldn’t have allowed the world to see. And yet, when you pieced all those moments and gestures together, an intimate tale emerged.

The way they glanced at each other in groups, as if checking in; the way they sat when they were alone together; the fleeting smiles they shared—all these things suggested two hearts and wills moving in synergy. Bors knew something about whores, and these two men were not a whore and a patron. They were lovers.

What would Gádden do if Bronn turned out to be a traitor? The Councillor was a man of merit, an exemplary public servant; Bors could tell just by looking at him that Dissidence would never tempt him. Gádden would be devastated. But for now, oh for now, how happy they were—

He slid his hand inside his sweatpants and began jerking himself off, staring at the frozen image on the screen as the montage ended. He felt Bronn’s hand on the small of his own back, warm and firm and guiding. He felt the softness of that dark-golden hair between his fingers.

With his free hand, he clicked open an image file.

This was his most prized possession, though he’d never have admitted so to Karishkov, who had sent it to him as a joke. _This should satisfy your hard-on for Bronn, lad_ , the Councillor had written. _Verán had these made back when he was the Island’s kettle boy, and we all passed them around._

The image was pornography of a tasteful kind, Bors supposed. He knew nothing of art, but he could see the artfulness in the way the photographer had posed Bronn by a tall window, so his body was half lost in the blue interior dimness and half splashed with the bleak radiance of a snowy day.

Though younger, Bronn was clearly recognizable in the photo. He was naked, of course, but only partly turned toward the viewer, so you felt like you were catching him unawares as he gazed outside with a look that was—wistful? Sad? Shut-down? More than anything, to Bors, the boy looked trapped.

He moved his hand faster on his cock, close to coming now, as he imagined sidling up behind the sad boy in the photo. Running a hand down the muscled flank, smooth as marble. Pressing his lips to a jutting shoulder blade. Cupping an ass-cheek.

Then the boy would come to life and turn around, into Bors’s arms, and the boy would wrap his own strong arms around Bors and bend until his hair grazed Bors’s forehead, the way Bors had seen him do with Councillor Gádden. It would tickle, and Bronn’s breath would be warm and healing against Bors’s ever-itchy eyelids, and that baritone voice would whisper in his ear, “Where’ve you been all this time, love? I’ve been waiting for you.”


	4. Every Word

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to add some good old-fashioned Gersha/Tilrey to this chapter, with a side of foreshadowed angst. Enjoy! :)

Vera Linnett tucked herself into the curve of Tilrey’s arm, face against his side, and reached up to stroke sweaty hair out of his eyes. “That was . . . like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life. You may have supernatural powers.”

Tilrey smiled down at her in the easy-going, accepting way he could do in his sleep, though he was starting to feel a little smothered. “I don’t think I’ve heard that one before. You think I’m a witch?”

“My dad loves Feudal folklore; he used to tell me all the stories. They believed in a spirit with glowing skin that would come out of the woods and seduce mortal women. Then he vanished, leaving them with no interest in mortal men and no will to live.”

He laughed. “I thought I was supposed to be doing the opposite, teaching you to enjoy other mortal men.”

“Oh, you are.”

But she didn’t sound sure, and he wondered how long it would be before he could gently set her on the path back to her husband. Sex with Vera was no chore, but it took time that he should be spending with Gersha, and compared with his bimonthly sessions with Davita Lindblom, this was a bit . . . vanilla. And there was always the hint of subtext, of past passion, that made him nervous. Just now, in the after-glow, he’d caught her looking at him with tears in her eyes.

_You don’t even know me. You never have._ But what was the point of telling her that?

“You’re learning to relax,” he said, running his fingers through her downy red-gold curls. “That’s the key, you know.”

He’d been trying out some of the techniques that her grandfather had used to manipulate his own responsiveness, conditioning her to associate particular strokes and touches and even words with strong arousal. He wouldn’t teach her to orgasm on command, because that was too cruel; he wouldn’t use her as an instrument of revenge. But overall, he didn’t hate this feeling of control.

Did that make him like Malsha Linnett? Maybe. Maybe just a little. _It’s not that I have any foolish notions that my granddaughter should be chaste,_ the old man had said, explaining to Tilrey why sleeping with Vera was a punishable offense. _We’re not Feudals, and she has a right to her own pleasure. But to share you with her—that I can’t abide. And I fear that, if she doesn’t shake this silly infatuation, you might hurt her._

“Is that how you got into Hargism?” Tilrey asked, pushing the memories away. “By hearing Feudal tales?”

Vera laughed in a slightly superior way and nuzzled his chest. “Hargism isn’t about trying to be Feudal. It’s about facing our fears. We spend our lives clinging to the Hártha—fire, warmth, indoors—and keeping out the Harga—ice, cold, chaos. All our rules, from the colors we wear and don’t to our Levels and our government, are ways of expressing our fear of the Harga. The cold, the Wastes, death itself.”

“So you go and stand in the snow, flirting with the cold.” Tilrey remembered, with a slithering sensation in his belly, how he’d stood on the parapet of Gersha’s building and imagined throwing himself off. But that was because he despised his life. “You were the cream of Oslov, you and your friends. Didn’t you realize how much you had to lose?”

“Oh, that was the whole point.” Her fingertips explored the planes of his chest. “The more you have to lose, the more exciting it is to tempt fate.”

Tilrey supposed he’d felt that way as a kid in Thurskein sometimes, breaking the rules with Dal. Before he realized how precarious his freedom was. “But you gave that all up.”

“I was all about embracing chaos until the night my brother and his friend walked straight out of the city into the Wastes and had to be found by helicopter. Did they really want to die, or were they showing off for the rest of us? I’m honestly still not sure.”

Tilrey took her wandering hand and clasped it, holding it still. “I’m sorry. But your brother—”

“Oh, he’s alive.” Vera chuckled bitterly. “His friend did die, but they stuck Gunsha in moral rehab. They say he still has ‘dangerous levels of depression,’ but they don’t understand him. My brother doesn’t need drugs and locked doors, he just doesn’t want to be a Linnett. He loves plants and rocks—collecting them, classifying them.”

“A Linnett can’t do that?”

“Linnetts have to rule the Republic. Not negotiable. And my dad’s family is just as bad.” She rolled over and propped herself on his chest, looking down at him with earnest dark eyes. “Gunsha hates rules, deadlines, bureaucracy. He needs to be somewhere far from Redda where he can go outside every day. Once I’m elected Councillor, I’ll get a residence in the Southern Range and arrange for him to live there full-time.”

“So that’s why you’ve gotten your life in order.” Tilrey understood at last. Like Gersha, she’d been pushed into power without a taste for it, but now she had a motivation. How many of these elites had to be forced to play their roles?

“Plus, it all started feeling empty—the risk taking, I mean. The rule breaking. Playing at anarchy.” Vera sighed, the exhale warm on his skin. “I mean, what’s the point? We never changed anything, never even really knew what we wanted to change.”

“So you married a high-named man, and you’re going to have kids to carry on your high names.”

For an instant, Vera’s mobile mouth expressed such childish distaste that he laughed and tousled her hair. “I’m just teasing you, Fir’n. I mean, raising the next generation of the Republic is a worthy goal. We all know that.”

“Yes. Of course.” She hid her face against him again.

***

The Port of Redda was not a pleasant place to eat one’s lunch. Outside, engines whined as planes taxied and roared as they took off. Inside, the air rang with shouts. Cargo pilots lined up in the echoing hall to clear their shipments for ground transport and get their new orders. They were a crude, noisy lot, bellowing and back-slapping. Bors was reminded of his relatives.

Wearing his maintenance-worker disguise again, he looked up from his fish-and-rice, craning around the sea of burly shoulders in gray coveralls to keep an eye on the woman who was the destination of the queue—Tilrey Bronn’s friend Mirella Tunstadt.

She dispatched orders from an office on the back wall, and she had no problem handling the pilots. When they cut in line, she yelled at them; when they bitched about their orders, she bitched back; when they hit on her, she unleashed a string of putdowns. Her black braid bobbed almost to her waist; her eyes flashed.

She was an odd friend for Bronn to have, given the high circles he moved in. But Bronn had known her husband when they were both kettle boys. Maybe he stayed in touch out of nostalgia, or because he liked fucking both spouses—the three had to be doing _something_ when they met up in those deserted rooms in Ring Two. Bors intended to find out what.

Tunstadt’s job gave her ample opportunity to pass information from Redda to the Laborer cities to Harbour and back. So far, though, Bors hadn’t caught her doing anything but grabbing orders and sassing the louts. He’d been here for nearly an hour, and it would start looking suspicious if he hung around much longer.

On the dingy-white drywall to his right, someone had stenciled an icon: a stylized yellow lightning-bolt enhanced with glitter. The Spark, the life giver. Bors had seen it often on walls in the neighborhood where he grew up, along with its companions, the Fruit and the Signal (or the Radiance, as some people called it). Maintenance crews scrubbed them off or painted over them, but they always reappeared.

His mother used to press her index finger to the Spark for good luck. Bors himself had done it a few times before big tests at school. Now, as an Upstart, he was ashamed of such superstitions; everyone knew the icons originated in the decadence of the Tangle and not in some magical past. The Spark had once signified electric power, nothing more or less.

He watched as pilots heading back out to the hangar paused to touch the icon with their fingers or thumbs. Did they really think the Spark would keep their battery-powered planes safely in the air, or was it just a reflex?

Bors himself shuddered at the thought of flying, though he’d already scheduled a flight to Thurskein to interview the asset Glommer had mentioned. If Gelmedyn yelled at him for wasting resources, he’d tactfully point out all the times she’d arranged a surveillance detail to cater to some high Admin or other. Ever since Bors had caught Egil, and thus won Karishkov’s favor, she’d cut him a certain amount of slack.

He was just deciding that it was time to go finish this particular surveillance from the safety of the Blinding Tank when the noise level shifted. Disgruntled muttering ran down the line, followed by someone’s outburst of “Hey, quit shooting the shit! I need this clearance yesterday!”

The complaint must have been directed at Tunstadt. She bellowed back: “Are your balls gonna shrivel up if you don’t get it, Garsh? Or has that already happened?”

Raucous laughter. Someone had joined Tunstadt in the office; sitting up straighter, Bors saw a flash of pale hair and a familiar ferrety face.

A nasal voice, sharp as a whip, called, “Carry on, Rella. Don’t keep your suitors waiting on my account.”

_Irin_. What was he doing with Mirella Tunstadt? Despite his curiosity, Bors had no desire to deal with his least favorite cousin unprepared, so he rose, tossed the remains of his lunch, and headed back down the corridor.

Reaching the Spark, he almost yielded to an impulse to touch it, because he’d just had a stroke of luck. Being a gutter dweller with criminal connections, Irin was invaluable as a source of gossip; if there was anything to know about Mirella Tunstadt, he knew it. He managed food service at the Sanctioned Brothel, which made him easy to find. Bors would corner him in a nice, quiet place and dangle a vial or two in front of him, and his cousin would spill everything.

Bors had a spring in his stride as he took the concourse back to the city. He cringed at the thought of ever telling his Int/Sec colleagues that he had people in his family who’d served the Republic by selling their bodies, like Cousin Irin and Aunt Hulda. But low connections could be advantageous, too.

***

Gersha had stopped waiting up for Tilrey years ago. While he preferred to be at home with his tea and his books or coding, his lover had a social schedule too busy for him to keep track of, even if he’d wanted to. So when they weren’t spending prearranged time together, he went to bed without worrying about whether Tilrey would join him.

Tonight he was half-asleep, his mind a gray haze, when the covers were drawn back. Too far gone to turn over, he felt the familiar body slide in and mold itself to his, the strong arms embracing him from behind.

This was new—or old. Gersha was suddenly painfully awake, but he lay still, afraid of breaking the spell. For the past ten-day or so, Tilrey had been in one of those moods where he didn’t like touching or being touched. He was still friendly enough to Gersha, and even affectionate in public, but they slept with space between them.

_I shouldn’t complain._ It had taken Gersha years just to bring Tilrey to the point where he was willing to admit he wanted some distance. Even now, he sometimes offered sex to smooth over the rough patches between them, and Gersha had to remind him they could be— _needed_ to be—honest with each other.

Tilrey’s breath was warm against his ear. A husky whisper: “Are you awake, love?”

Gersha came alive and wriggled round in Tilrey’s arms to face him, feeling his cock respond to the closeness with humiliating predictability. But that was honesty, too, wasn’t it? “How could I not wake up for this?” he whispered back, as if speaking aloud might ruin the moment.

Tilrey laughed, a low rumble, and pulled Gersha’s face against the neckline of his thin T-shirt. He wasn’t naked, just undressed enough to make Gersha’s blood pound. “Did you see Albertine Linnett tonight?”

Gersha nodded, trying to refocus on politics, though his traitrous body was nestling closer to Tilrey’s of its own accord, his cock aching for the friction of a hip or thigh. “We talked about the Harbour trip again. She’s planning to go in the summer, and she thinks the presence of a second Councillor—me—might convince the Duke of Bettevy to give our troops full control of his port and air space so we can patrol that corridor for Dissident activity.”

Tilrey’s fingers moved in Gersha’s hair, nudging the curls away from his forehead and sending a pleasant shiver up his spine. “I thought only Colonel Thibault of Njork was conspiring with shirkers.”

“No one doubts the Duke’s loyalty to us. But with the kind of primitive infrastructure they have down there, it’s hard to maintain control.” Gersha couldn’t help sighing; foreign affairs were the last thing he wanted to discuss. But there was a more important point here: “I asked Linnett about bringing you along. She’ll need to interview you for security reasons, but there should be no impediment.”

At the words, Tilrey’s body came alive, too, quivering with excitement. He rolled over on top of Gersha and kissed him—tenderly at first, then claiming Gersha’s mouth forcefully, taking his breath away. His hand reached between them and found Gersha’s achingly stiff cock.

Gersha moaned and reached for Tilrey’s ass, squeezing it through the thin sweats before he could stop himself. He should be letting Tilrey take the lead, but, but—

They tangled like that for a few minutes, kissing and nipping, Tilrey fostering Gersha’s erection with slow, practiced strokes. Then he withdrew, smiling playfully at Gersha’s uncontrollable whimper of protest, and propped himself on an elbow. “It’s really gonna happen, then? We’re going?”

Gersha nodded, trying desperately not to squirm into an even better position. He’d always dreamed of seeing Harbour, too, but travel plans held less appeal when Tilrey’s hair was tickling his forehead and Tilrey’s cock was hardening against his thigh.

“I want you,” he whispered, bucking his shoulders in an effort to connect their mouths again—but Tilrey’s weight on him was powerful, leaden, and absolute. They would proceed when he chose. The awareness of his own helplessness in this position, shameful and delicious at once, made Gersha’s whole body thrum with the need to be stroked and penetrated. “Please.”

Still Tilrey stayed still, his hand like iron on Gersha’s cock. “Will you always want me?” he asked in a soft, neutral voice. “Every time I creep into your bed? No matter how old and ugly I am?”

Gersha’s breath hitched in a laugh. “Hard to imagine. Anyway, by that time I’ll be even older and uglier.”

Tilrey didn’t smile. “It’s a real question, love. Will you always want me, no matter where I’ve been?”

Gersha strove to process the words, to understand why Tilrey would ask such a thing, but his cock had other priorities. “Yes,” he breathed, eager for Tilrey’s hand to start moving again. “Always.”

Tilrey gave him what he wanted, then, bending to undo Gersha’s mouth again with his tongue while his fingers began pumping Gersha’s shaft.

Awash in sensations that seemed to dismantle him layer by layer, leaving nothing but red-hot need, Gersha barely heard the words his lover whispered just as their lips parted: “Even when you know I don’t _always_ want you back?”

Later he’d remember them, though. And then he wouldn’t be able to forget.


	5. Every Claim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next one sort of form a continuous unit, but it was getting monstrously long, so I chopped it in two. :) Next chapter will reveal what Bors does at the Brothel. And yes, the story will end before I run out of lines from "Every Breath You Take." ;) Thanks for reading!

Tilrey felt watched.

Dodging through a snow flurry on the tram platform, a paper sack of takeout under his arm, he stopped to glance backward. No familiar or suspicious faces, just the usual evening stragglers returning from workouts, café dates, or family gatherings to the warm hive of the building.

Not that it mattered if anyone saw him visiting Vera on free-nights . . . did it? He hadn’t told Gersha, but if some busybody did, he’d simply explain their unusual arrangement and the political utility of making an alliance with Tollsha Linden. And Gersha would sigh and say, “I leave that to you then, love.”

Gersha was doing that a lot lately—turning away. The last time they fucked had been good, _really_ good, but Gersha had slipped off in the morning without a word, and Tilrey knew it was his fault. He had a vague memory of saying something in the heat of passion that danced on the borderline between teasing and cruelty, something that was at least half sheer provocation.

Why would he needle Gersha like that? It was the exhaustion of juggling a busy schedule, he decided. One night he was plotting a Council takeover with Davita Lindblom and letting her hit him with a belt, the next he was helping Vera Linnett with her orgasm issues, and the night after that he was passing intel to the True Hearth via Bror and Mirella. No wonder he was getting paranoid; he was overstretched.

He should do something nice for Gersha, soon. Perhaps suggest a getaway to the Southern Range where they could be undisturbed.

But . . . but. He couldn’t help sometimes yearning for Gersha to snap right back at him, to be cruel in turn and put him in his place. He couldn’t help sometimes missing their early days together, when Gersha had been cold and standoffish and beautifully prickly, and every coupling had felt like venturing into an icy landscape where his whole body tingled with the effort and excitement.

This was no time to think about that—people to see, work to do. Arriving at Vera’s door, he shifted the food to the crook of his other arm and knocked. He’d left her in bed a half-hour ago, promising to return with sustenance for another round. And she, like Gersha, didn’t want to feel his sharp edges.

Footsteps in the hall behind him. Still jumpy, Tilrey turned—and froze as a rumbling, amused voice asked, “What on earth are _you_ doing here, lad?”

The tall, shambling figure of Tollsha Linden blocked the light. Tilrey’s mouth went dry, but he spoke with the smoothness he’d learned working in the Sector, a lie coming easily to his lips. “Good evening, Fir Linden. Fir’n Councillor Linnett, your mother-in-law, gave me some papers in the Sector to convey to your wife, and—”

He broke off as, behind him, the door swung open. Vera stood there in a robe, her hair a nimbus of brightness, her mouth set.

She glanced between them, then said, “Oh hello, Tollsha. Did you get the night wrong? Yes, I’m fucking him, not that it’s any of your business.”

***

The lobby of the Sanctioned Brothel was spacious and starkly elegant, with a pitched, skylighted roof and a shiny black slate floor. It reminded Bors of the Sector. Maybe that was the point—to make the elite feel like they were working even when they were playing.

He himself felt completely out of place here, though he was all too familiar with the withered, sour-faced woman who sat behind the black marble reception desk. “Hello, Aunt Hulda.”

Hulda nodded, unsmiling. After a long and diligent career in the business of providing pleasure, she’d been appointed the Sanctioned’s director three years ago, which was basically the pinnacle of her profession. She seemed to regard her Raised nephew the way she did everyone else: with stoic boredom.

“Borsha,” she said. “Back for the usual?”

Bors nodded, clenching a fist behind his back. Damn all his wretched Drudge relations—but he couldn’t quarrel with Hulda or Irin, because they knew everyone and everything. You couldn’t beat a whore’s intel.

“I was hoping to have a chat with Cousin Rinsha,” he said stiffly. “Do you know if he’s free in the next couple hours?”

On the way here, he’d caught sight of Tilrey Bronn leaving the Restaurant and yielded to an impulse to follow him to the tram stop, just to see whether he was heading home or to Vera Linnett’s place again. The latter. Bors pushed down a flicker of frustration that he couldn’t know what they were doing in that apartment together—or was it envy?

_Of course not. I despise him._

Hulda consulted the screen in front of her, a local network for scheduling the work of her staff and stable. “Irin’s busy with dinner prep right now, but you can probably catch him in an hour. Try the staff lounge. As for Kai, he’s got a spare thirty if you go in right now.”

There was no judgment in her voice, but Bors dug his nails into his palm. “Do I have enough credit?”

Hulda looked straight at him, her long-lashed hazel eyes hinting at the beauty she must once have possessed. “You don’t need credit,” she said in her throaty croak—the wages of decades of illicit pipe smoking. “You’re family. But go see your mother soon, okay, Borsha? She says it’s been too long. She misses you.”

***

“May I at least come in?” Tollsha Linden asked with exaggerated courtesy. “Or would that be breaking the mood?”

Vera threw the door wide, acting as if she hadn’t noticed her husband’s acid tone. “Be my guest. Make yourself comfortable.”

What was she playing at? Tilrey bobbed his head first in Tollsha’s direction, then in Vera’s, and thrust the sack of takeout into her arms. “I’d best be going, Fir’n. Time’s getting on.”

Had Tollsha been the one following him earlier? But he’d seemed genuinely startled to see Tilrey.

“No!” Vera’s voice had a harder edge now. “There’s no call to run away, Tilrey. You’re _my_ guest.” With a dramatic wave, she ushered them both inside, and they obeyed—Tilrey stiffly; Tollsha with a lazy, rolling stride.

On the threshold, the Upstart stopped and made an “after you” motion, telling Tilrey conversationally, “You’re a Linnett tradition, I suppose. First her dad and granddad, now her.” He chuckled, drawing a hand through his brassy golden locks, and sauntered into the living room. “No need for lies between us, eh?”

Vera had gone very red, but she began unpacking the food and fetching the plates as if her husband hadn’t spoken. When he flopped on the couch and put his feet up, she said sharply, “Are you going to tell me why you’re here?”

“Does a husband need an excuse to see his wife?” Tollsha clasped his hands behind his head.

His face was rounder and ruddier than Tilrey remembered it. Tollsha had always been a lady’s man, handsome and well aware of it, but the years were starting to show on him.

“Actually,” he announced, “I was coming over to celebrate. It’s official: I’m standing for the Island Party at the next Council election.”

“So glad to hear it, darling.” Vera patted the couch beside her, not sounding glad at all. “It’s all we’ve hoped for. Don’t just stand there, Rishka. The broth’s getting cold.”

Tilrey’s political instincts told him to leave, but equally long-ingrained reflexes forced him to be respectful. The last time he and Tollsha had had anything like a meaningful interaction, he’d still been keeping his eyes down and waiting for Upstarts to give him permission to sit. He glanced toward the other man now, unable to help it, and saw smugness curve Tollsha’s lips.

“Yes, sit down, _Rishka_ ,” the younger Linden said. “Don’t let me interrupt whatever’s going on here with my piddling little Sector matters. By the way, does Gersha Gádden know you’re here?”

“Also none of your business,” Vera said coldly. For the first time in a while, the imperious Linnett was coming out in her.

“We agreed before we married, love, there wouldn’t be any jealousy between us,” she went on. “So you can have your little Drudge mistresses, your Lisha and your Ulla or whatever her name is, and I can have . . . whoever I like.”

Tilrey settled himself beside her. The whole situation was a glass vessel the smallest movement might shatter. “Really, Fir’n, perhaps the two of you have things to discuss.”

“No.” Vera clasped his knee, hard. “You’re the one I invited.” She turned to face her husband. “I don’t mean to be rude, love, but you did just sort of barge in, and it’s not your night.”

For the first time since he’d appeared, Tollsha was starting to look ruffled. Perhaps he thought of his wife as a shy, dreamy girl, easily influenced, and was just now getting acquainted with her more assertive side.

“I do apologize, my love,” he said, all earnestness as he tried to recover the upper hand. “Please forgive me for my boorishness—I guess I was surprised. Until now I didn’t even know . . .” He turned to Tilrey. “Forgive me, what is your given name again?”

Tilrey felt his face burn as hotly as Vera’s had a moment ago. Was he just reacting to being caught off guard, or to the intrusive, unwelcome memories of sucking Tollsha’s cock? “I do believe you know my name, Fir. You said it just now.”

The younger Linden had always been decent to him, always been kind, on those evenings when they were thrown together because the elder Linden didn’t want to have to deal with Tilrey. Tollsha always winced when he saw the bruises. He always apologized for his uncle, saying, “He hasn’t been the same since the stroke.” He never actually stopped the beatings, but what could he do? And anyway, Tilrey had always shut down that particular discussion by saying, “He barely tapped me” or “I bruise easily, Fir.”

Now, though, Tollsha didn’t look especially kind or apologetic. “Oh yes, right. Tilrey. _Rishka._ As I was saying, until now, Tilrey, I wasn’t even sure you could service women.”

_Shit._ The man had a jealous streak after all. Had Vera known that all along? Maybe she’d underestimated just how insulted her husband would be by her choice of bed partner. Like many powerful men, Tollsha probably maintained a double standard, bedding Drudge girls while expecting his wife to keep to her own Level.

Seeing his wife’s glare, Tollsha raised a placating hand. “Forgive me! How would I know these things? Not everyone’s versatile. Me, for instance. I can fuck men if I must, but I don’t deny that my strong preference is for women.” He shot a sidelong, meaningful glance at Tilrey. “Those few nights my uncle gave you to me, I never did fuck you, did I?”

The words were an open provocation, a white-hot blade against his cheek, but Tilrey kept his face placid. He could play the game of nonreaction better than anyone. If Tollsha wanted open insolence or a fight, he wouldn’t get it.

“No one cares, and you’re being outrageously rude, Tollsha,” Vera said in a tone that indicated that she, for one, cared more than she wanted to whether her lover and her husband had had sex. “Do you think I give a damn what you think he can do in bed when I _know_?”

Her hand trembled on Tilrey’s knee, and he clasped it firmly in his. He wasn’t sure whether Tollsha was trying to rile him, Vera, or both of them, but it was working on her all too well. He kept his voice level: “You’re upsetting your wife, I think, Fir.”

“Oh well, if I’m _upsetting_ her.” Tollsha bounced to his feet, the abruptness indicating how he felt about being reprimanded by a Drudge. “And your job is to soothe her, I suppose. You’re an expert at that, as I recall.”

_Here it comes._ But all the quick wit Tilrey had learned from years in politics had deserted him, or perhaps he simply couldn’t bring himself to care enough to fend off the attack. Whatever the reason, he sat there like a fool, tongue-tied, and allowed Tollsha to drive a wedge between them just as he’d known Tollsha was itching to do:

“I haven’t forgotten the magic you do with that mouth of yours, lad. I didn’t take your ass when you offered it, back in the day, but I was always happy to have you on your knees. I hope he’s as good with the female anatomy as he was with mine, Vera darling.”


	6. Every Smile

Kai Meirthal was napping when Bors entered his assigned room, his long, sleekly muscled form stretched on a low couch in the corner. Pallid light from the slit of window cast his cherubic lips and high cheekbones into relief. Bors stood over him for a few seconds just looking.

Kai woke with a jerk and sat up, rubbing his lower lip. His green eyes, which used to light up his whole face, were more often filmy these days with addiction. “Oh, hi, Borsha,” he said, stretching languidly. “Was I drooling?”

Bors shook his head. He never knew how to start these encounters; even when they were schoolmates, Kai’s beauty rendered him speechless.

Not that Kai would have given Bors the time of day back then. Kai was an Upstart—his parents were Upstarts, anyway—and he was popular with a crowd who drowned themselves in sap and rotgut and never studied.

Then Notifications came around, and suddenly Kai and Bors were thrust together: two of just three students in their class who’d slipped over the great divide. While Bors was Raised, Kai was Lowered. The third student to receive an anomalous Notification was a math genius, so her Raising surprised no one. But the two of them were _the_ topic for months. People talked of them in the same breath whether they liked it or not, calling them “the unmentionables.”

On the last day of school, Kai had come stinking drunk to Bors’s room to “congratulate” him on his Raising, bearing a bottle. Bors declined to have a drink, and Kai broke the bottle over Bors’s desk and cut his hand, and Bors bandaged it and helped him sober up. Thus began a friendship of a sort, engineered by circumstance more than preference.

“Well, sit down, dummy.” Kai shoved over to make room. “What time is it, _Fir_? Are you here for a thirty?”

Bors nodded like a fool, sat down, and pulled a vial from his pocket. “Hulda said there was just time.”

“Thanks.” Kai snatched the vial and tucked it into one of the soft boots that slumped beside the couch. His feet were bare, his shirt and pants soft and sheer. “So, what do you wanna do?”

Bors cleared his throat, unable to meet Kai in the eye. At his ration level, the most he could officially ask from Kai was a blow job, and even that would cost him four months of saved work-credit. Upstarts liked fucking Upstarts, even a fallen, former Upstart, which gave Kai a fairly lofty place in the brothel’s internal hierarchy. But Hulda always waved Bors through without recording the transaction, and Kai was . . . generous.

It made Bors feel dirty to get treatment that waived the rules. Hypocritical. But just being close to Kai was doing disturbing things to his self-control.

The whole brothel was heated like a greenhouse, and Kai’s golden skin bore a seemingly permanent sheen. A sweaty musk wafted between them as he bent over Bors and gently palmed the Upstart’s hardening cock through his tunic.

Bors moaned before he could stop himself, rearing up against Kai’s hand. Kai bent lower, his brown curls tickling Bors’s cheek, and whispered in his ear, “The lube’s on the table. Take me like you did last time.”

“We shouldn’t. My ration level . . .”

Kai pulled Bors’s chin up and kissed him hard, slipping his tongue expertly inside and taking Bors’s breath away. “Don’t be so fucking uptight, Fir. I know you like to fuck me hard. Go on, take what’s yours. Remind yourself you’re the winner and I’m the loser.”

Bors didn’t want to be aroused by this talk, but he was, every time. He lay helplessly on the couch, a prisoner of his own arousal, and watched as Kai shed his clothes and lubed himself with swift, practiced movements.

Kai went to all fours and spread his legs, presenting his ass with a shamelessness that stirred a familiar dark heat in Bors’s belly. “C’mon, sweetheart. We don’t have all day.”

The world whited out around Bors, nothing in it but Kai’s ready, willing body, and he was on top of his friend and inside him, thrusting desperately, before he’d given himself permission to move.

It was always like this—an animal lust that sank its teeth into him and threatened to tear him apart. He knew he was digging his nails into Kai’s back, and he knew he should moderate his rhythm if he wanted to last, but it was like being possessed. He thrust home over and over, his hips pounding Kai’s ass and tears streaming down his face, his hand in Kai’s hair to press him into the mattress, and after what felt like thirty harrowing seconds, he came.

Returning to himself was never easy. Bors was dimly aware of Kai disentangling himself and going to wash up, but he couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes and face his own shame.

When the world took on solid shapes again, Kai was dressed and coaxing him to sit up, handing him a cup of hot tea. Bors took a swallow and was grateful for the bitterness. “I’m sorry,” he said in a small voice.

Kai stroked his hair. The casual gesture made Bors’s breath catch—how strange and beautiful, this tenderness that he never received from anyone else. He felt he needed to do something more important to deserve it, save the Republic in some notable way, but he couldn’t stop himself from thrilling to the touch.

“Don’t be sorry.” Kai emptied half a vial of sap into his own palm and licked it dry. “You should see the assholes I have to deal with all day here. _Do this, do that, tell me I have a big cock._ You’re my favorite patron by far, Fir.”

“Don’t call me that.” The words came before he could stop them.

“Why not? You’re a Strutter now and I’m a Drudge. I’m not ashamed of that. I embrace it.” Kai stuck his finger in the vial and popped it in his mouth. “Proof that the system works, right? Somebody had to get sacrificed on the altar of meritocracy, and I never much liked sitting at a desk anyway.”

“You don’t have to be _here_ , though.” Bors fastened his trousers and tugged his tunic down over them. “You could have so many better postings.”

He rose, a little shakily, and examined himself in the mirror above the massage table. Would Irin be able to tell what he’d been doing? His cousin had a nasty sense of humor. “I could help you,” he went on, turning to Kai. “Maybe I could get you a job as a screen minder.”

Kai cackled. “Me, pass the security clearance? I’m sweet-drowned—even a squeaky-clean little suck-up like you can see that.” He dipped his finger in the vial again. “No, I’m fine, lad. I’m just fine here. You go back to burning your eyes out on your screens, spying on everybody who’s not as virtuous as you, and come back when your cock needs another dipping. I’ll be here.”

_Maybe I won’t come again._ But Bors didn’t say the words, because he knew he’d be back whether he approved of himself or not.

Kai grinned lazily, exposing white teeth, and raised his vial to the light so they could both see the golden currents in the dark-brown sap. “I like you, Borsha. You fuck like your life depends on it. And every time I see you with your stupid tunic buttoned to your chin, walking around like there’s a lead pipe up your ass, I’m happier not to be a Strutter.”

***

When the door closed behind her husband, Vera freed her hand from Tilrey’s and slid down to the other end of the couch. Tilrey rose and started ladling the lukewarm soup into bowls, trying to ignore the tightness in his chest.

Vera sat with her arms crossed, staring at her knees with a scowl that reminded Tilrey of that evening in the Restaurant with her grandfather. But this wasn’t like that—he could speak now.

He placed a bowl in front of her and touched her—a fleeting tap on the cheek to bring her back. “Don’t let Tollsha get to you. If you were trying to make him jealous, you succeeded.”

“I wasn’t!” The words came out in a growl. “That was never the point.” Then she looked straight at him. “Why did you lie to me?”

“Lie to you?”

“You said you never did anything with Tollsha, sexually.”

Had he said that? “I said he preferred women, and he does. We never fucked. I didn’t think you’d want to know the details.”

“He said you—you—you offered yourself to him, and he said no.” Vera’s mouth was twisted, her eyes too bright, but no tears flowed. “Is that true? Why would you do that?”

Oh verdant fucking hells. Tilrey threw himself down on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. “Why would I do that? You’re seriously asking? Please don’t tell me _you’re_ jealous now, because that’s fucking ridiculous.”

“I just can’t.” Vera turned to him, still with that awful glassy stare. “I hate when Tollsha touches me, Rishka. I’ve tried not to mind, but he’s so full of himself. I feel like he’s raping me every time. And knowing he touched _you_ —I just can’t. I can’t stand to think of it.”

The anger Tilrey tried so hard to repress in his daily dealings with Upstarts was acting up again. It zipped up his spine and tensed every muscle, forcing him to spring to his feet to shake it off.

“Well then, I have bad news for you.” His voice sounded wrong—strangled. He needed to be calm. “A lot of men have touched me, Vera. I lost count long ago. And as for ‘offering myself’—well, that’s what whores do. I needed him to like me. When you’re in a bad place and you need to make sure someone’s on your side, sex is what you offer. It’s a reflex. If you think that means I gave a damn about Tollsha, you—”

“Did you give a damn about _me_?” Her eyes hadn’t released his. “Is that how it was with me, Rishka? Those times, years ago—did you just fuck me because I asked, not because you wanted to?”

_Oh fuck._ But he was too pissed off to lie, and he couldn’t coddle her naïveté forever. “Pretty much, yeah. I mean, there was the whole thrill of the forbidden. And I was curious, and I liked you fine. But mainly, yeah—mainly I just did it ’cause you wanted it so badly, and I was used to saying yes.”

“You said . . . you said.” She was sobbing now.

“That I was half in love with you? Yeah, I said that, because back then I believed it. But I learned better after we got caught. I learned what I really was. Do you know how your grandfather punished me, Vera?”

She was staring at him again, her mouth distended with horror. “He said he wouldn’t punish you. He said—”

“He let you think you saved me from a punishment.” He’d never meant to tell her this, knowing how much it would hurt her, but the anger was bringing everything out of him in a filthy, scathing flood. “Malsha was clever that way; he had it both ways. He taught you your little lesson, and we two ate our meal—well, he ate it; I had no appetite—and then we went home, and he called his driver into the bedroom with us.”

As he talked, he strode into the vestibule and took his boots from the rack and jammed his feet into them. “And your grandfather pulled a chair close to the bed and told me to strip and lie down and oblige the driver while he watched.” He swung his heavy parka from its hook. “I stared at him, and he said, ‘Don’t be a fool; why would I punish only one of you? My granddaughter needs to think you’re a servile creature. But we both know better, don’t we?”

As he spoke the words, he felt his voice falling into Malsha Linnett’s far-too-familiar cadences. Would he ever be free of the man?

Vera turned away, her cheeks raw and tear-glazed. “I’m sorry, Rishka. I’m so sorry.”

Tilrey yanked the door open and stood on the threshold. “And then I let the driver fuck me, because I was just a stupid fucking kid and I was scared. I’m not some doomed lover from one of your sagas, Vera. I never was.”

As he closed the door, he heard her say in a choked voice, “But I did love you.”

***

Irin could tell he’d been fucking somebody here. Bors was sure of it. His little cousin’s canny eyes were narrowed, the corners of his thin lips crinkled with mean-spirited amusement.

But Irin only said, “Sure, I know about Mirella and Tilrey Bronn. She’s a buddy of mine from way back. Why do _you_ want to know? Is the Councillor’s special little friend in trouble with Int/Sec?”

Bors kept his face blank. “I can’t talk to you about an ongoing investigation.”

“You’re such a fucking bore, Bors.” Irin forked up pallid clots of egg from the stir-fry in front of him.

The staff lounge of the Sanctioned Brothel was a cluttered, dusty space that doubled as a storeroom, nothing like the sleek, dramatically lit lounge where the whores drank and cavorted for the entertainment of their patrons. Bors had passed through that lounge on his way, and a couple of shaggy-haired, scantily clad boys had paused mid-billiards to give him glares of nasty curiosity. Had Kai told everyone about the former Drudge who came here to have him?

“Rella brags about Bronn sometimes,” Irin said, mouth full. “She and Bror—her husband—have a regular thing going with him.”

Bors nodded. “So that’s what she told you? That they meet up for, uh . . .”

“Fun.” Irin grinned, displaying egg bits between his crooked teeth. “Do you want me to infiltrate their threesome? If they’d have me, I’d be there in a heartbeat.” He pressed one hand, clad in a fraying fingerless glove, to his heart. “Those two gorgeous lads together—I might explode just watching, let alone participating.”

Bors felt his stomach turn. “Do you have any idea why they meet up in the vacant blocks? A different room each time? Why not in their own quarters?”

“Well, they choose the nice apartments, right? And when they’re done, they can just leave the soiled bedding.” Irin’s grin was practically a leer. “Rella said it’s a habit Bror and Tilrey got into when they were kettle boys. She’s a pretty girl, but she’s quite the show-off, Fir Cousin. Should I call you Fir Cousin?”

Bors had long practice in ignoring such taunts. Everything about Irin made his skin crawl. His cousin had worked their Aunt Hulda’s connections and taken up her profession out of sheer laziness, as far as Bors could tell, while engaging in petty smuggling on the side. Though Irin had stopped actually whoring himself years ago, the residue of men’s sweaty hands seemed to cling to him, along with a toxic cynicism.

But there was something to like about venal little wretches like Irin Dartán. Once you’d bought them, you could trust them.

Bors drew a vial from his tunic pocket and held it out. “Do you think you _could_ get into a room with the three of them? Or are you just showing off, too?”

Irin didn’t reach for the vial, but his eyes fixed on it, and his fingers twitched. “Can’t guarantee anything, _Fir_. But I could give it my best shot. You want me to see what they’re doing in there and report back to you, boss?”

Bors set the vial on the scored laminate table. “If you can do that for me, I’ll supply you for the next six months.”

“And if all they’re doing is fucking—you want to hear about that, too?”

Bors lowered his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the smirk on his cousin’s face. _He knows_ was his first thought—but of course Irin didn’t know, couldn’t know that he jerked off thinking about Tilrey Bronn. Irin was just being Irin, trying to get a rise out of him. The man couldn’t conceive of anyone doing anything for motives more elevated than sex, sap, and easy living.

He said, “No thanks. That part you can keep to yourself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does it strain plausibility that Bors doesn't spot the Dissident right in front of him? You be the judge. But I like the idea that sometimes people can't clearly see the people closest to them. Thanks for reading! :)


	7. Every Move

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm adding a dub-con tag to the story because Vera definitely isn't enthusiastically consenting in her scene with Tollsha here. (It's more of a "Lie back and think of England" scenario.)
> 
> This will probably have ten chapters, so the end is in sight! Thank you so much for your kudos and comments. They make great points and keep me going. <3

“We’re fucked,” Bror Birun said. He pulled Mirella to him and held her close, his chin resting on her dark hair while his eyes met Tilrey’s accusingly. “That Int/Sec bastard’s onto us. What the hell are we supposed to do now?”

“Nothing.” Mirella squirmed a little in her husband’s grip. “Just act normal.”

Opposite them, Tilrey sat on the bed with his feet braced against the wall, trying not to show his own concern. Bror was only involved with Dissidence because of him and Mirella, and he didn’t want his old friend to start worrying—or worse, panicking.

He turned to Irin Dartán, who lay sprawled on the carpet of the unoccupied apartment they were using this week, looking annoyingly untroubled by the news he’d brought. “You say your cousin’s not a threat, but how do you know that? Egil’s dead because of him.”

“Egil didn’t know what he was dealing with,” Irin said, his ratty little face looking almost smug. “I do. Do you trust me, Rishka?”

Tilrey hadn’t been face-to-face with the True Hearth’s leader in years, and he still didn’t particularly like the man on a personal level. This was the first time they’d all met together, because the point of Mirella and Bror was to make direct contact between Tilrey and Irin Dartán unnecessary. Mirella passed on the True Hearth news, or the news Irin deemed it safe and necessary for Tilrey to know, and Tilrey briefed her on the progress of the reformist efforts in the Council.

It was the best way to maintain a safe distance while making sure they weren’t working at cross-purposes. But if that little snitch in Int/Sec was on their trail, all bets were off.

“Politically I trust you, yes,” Tilrey told Irin. “Personally, less so. Why the fuck didn’t you tell us your cousin is an Int/Sec analyst?”

“Because it doesn’t matter.” Irin dipped his forefinger in a vial and swiped the sap across his front teeth. “I’ve known Bors my whole life and vice versa. Familiarity breeds contempt, but in this case, it also breeds thick-headedness. He thinks he knows me to the bone, and he despises me so much he doesn’t think I’m _capable_ of shirking.” He sucked his finger. “Why do you think I work in the Sanctioned Brothel, Tilrey? Why do you think I run a pathetic little smuggling operation? Why do you think I’m never without a vial in my hand? Because it makes me look like a bottom feeder, a dung beetle, and everyone prefers to pretend dung beetles don’t exist.”

Tilrey couldn’t deny that. “But what are you going to tell your Strutter cousin when he asks what you saw here?”

Irin’s eyes narrowed, his gaze sweeping the room. “Simple. I came here to see if you three tall, gorgeous people were talking treason or just getting busy enjoying each other’s gorgeousness, and it was the latter. I asked to join in.” He eyed Bror, who was scowling at him, with a humorous look of malice. “But all you’d let me do was blow you, you handsome fellow. And then—how sad—you sent me on my way.”

“You really think that’s going to satisfy an analyst?” Mirella dislodged one of Bror’s clinging hands. She was well aware, as Tilrey was, that her husband was only involved with the True Hearth for her sake, but she soothed Bror’s fears and doubts with firm, loving patience. Tilrey envied her; if only he could be so honest with Gersha.

“Maybe we should try to turn your cousin to the cause,” Mirella went on. “He was born like us, so he knows—”

Irin cut her off with a gesture. “First rule of shirking, my love: _never_ try to turn a Drudge who’s been Raised. They’re the worst toadies, the most attached to their privilege—Egil should’ve known that. And Bors is the worst of the worst. He doesn’t just believe in privilege, he believes in the whole absurd theory that underpins it. He grovels at his superiors’ feet and he loves it.”

A shiver moved over Tilrey’s shoulder blades. He’d done plenty of groveling in his time, sometimes even convincing himself he enjoyed it. _Of course, Fir. Whatever you like, Fir. I’m here for you, Fir._

“So what do we do?” He slid his feet to the ground, determined not to show his friends even a hint of flagging resolution. “Now we know he’s out there?”

Irin shrugged. “The key is not to change our behavior in any obvious way. Keep meeting on schedule, and keep choosing a different room every time. Put a good face on it. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”

***

“Is that better?” Tollsha Linden asked, changing his angle.

“Um, yes,” Vera lied. He was so heavy and hairy and sweating all over her; if only he’d just be done.

“How about this?”

He reached between their bodies and did something not unlike what Tilrey used to do, flicking a practiced finger. The result was not the same. Vera closed her eyes and tried to access the place in her head where there was only endless sunlight and the flash of Tilrey’s eyes. She tried to turn her husband’s weight into Tilrey’s weight and his hand into Tilrey’s hand, but one of them was a darting flame and the other was cold lead.

That wasn’t Tollsha’s fault, was it? “Mmm.” She canted her hips up to meet his thrusts, because she knew now how she was supposed to react, at least. “ _Yesss_. Good.”

The next instant she went still and cold, hating herself. Play-acting was for whores, not Linnetts. If Tollsha wanted an heir, maybe he’d just have to weather an insult to his precious vanity.

“What’s wrong?” He stopped moving, panting hard. (Too much rich food clogging his arteries, Vera thought, knowing she wasn’t being nice and not caring.) “Are you still angry at me, Versha?”

“No.” _Yes._ She kept her gaze on a spot over his shoulder. _Bear it for family. Bear it for your brother._ “Don’t stop, Tollsha.”

He stroked her hair, and she cringed. “I feel like I’m hurting you, love. I don’t want that. Is this about the boy?”

_You won’t even use his name._ Vera lay stonily, not meeting his eyes.

“I spoke to him out of turn because I was jealous.” Tollsha’s voice faltered a little. “You were different with him, love—your eyes, your smile, your whole body. I just want a bit of that.”

_Then you shouldn’t have driven him away, because only he can make me feel that way. Go find your Drudge girlfriends if you want to be loved._ But either of those ripostes would make her look weak, and there was no point in starting a fight over Tilrey when Tilrey didn’t love her and never had. The less Tollsha inquired about their non-existent relationship, the better.

Not that she’d ever say a bad word about Tilrey, to her husband or anyone else. She still burned with the memory of how Tollsha had clumsily tried to shame him.

_I’m poison to him like the rest of my family. I need to leave him alone._

Vera pasted a cold smile on her face, recalling the long-suffering way her mother often looked at her father and vice versa. If they could endure a loveless match, so could she—but not without getting the occasional barb in. She forced herself to meet her husband’s eyes.

“You did me a favor that night, Tollsha. I used to think you were a fine man and I just couldn’t appreciate you, but now I see how petty and insecure you are. Do me another favor, please, and just finish.”

***

Tilrey glanced up from his desk in the antechamber to see Gersha on his way out the door. When he spotted the electric-blue silk scarf that the Councillor had knotted around the sleeve of his white robe of office, his first thought was that it was a nice complement to Gersha’s eyes. His second was that Gersha was going to that damned memorial.

“You don’t need to hide it,” he said.

Gersha, who’d been holding the scarfed arm close to his body, straightened guiltily. “Why would I do that? You know I have to go mourn Visha Verán.”

The brittle, ancient former majority leader had finally expired after a short retirement and a long illness. When Tilrey heard the news a few days ago, he’d reached deep into his feelings and tried to come up with a whisker of grief. After all, he had lived two full years in Ludovic Verán’s house, sleeping in his bed, making his tea, catering to his whims, enduring his fond public caresses, listening to his gossip and family matters and complaints.

But the only sentiment he found in the depths of his soul was _About time._

“I’m not invited to his burial pyre?” he asked, smiling brilliantly to hide his real feelings. “Or you just don’t want to show up there with me?”

Gersha’s face fell, as if he were worried he’d offended Tilrey. Even now, he was so transparent. “Neither. No one would object to your attending, I’m sure, but I assumed you—”

“Wouldn’t be caught dead there.” Tilrey didn’t want to tease him anymore; there was no fun in it. “And you’re right, love. I don’t want to stand by that man’s symbolic pyre and pray he had a bright last moment in which he can dwell forever. I hope he had a dark last moment full of pain and the awareness that his entire life was a waste. And the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do with Verán and a mourning scarf is strangle him with it.”

He broke off, realizing too late that (a) he was close to shouting and (b) he sounded like a pitiless monster. _Or Malsha Linnett._

“I’m sorry I brought it up.” Poor Gersha was staring open-mouthed, but why? Surely he’d glimpsed the less forgiving side of Tilrey before, and if he hadn’t, maybe it was time he got acquainted with it.

Tilrey slid his chair forward, slamming a knee against the desk and sending a file folder flying to the floor. He didn’t bother to retrieve it. “You _didn’t_ bring it up, Fir. You were trying to skulk out of here without even mentioning where you were going.”

Gersha was clearly struggling to regain his usual Sector dignity. “I see you’re upset. I understand. But you know I _have_ to go. I couldn’t very well skip out on it.”

Tilrey did know. “So go, Fir.”

“Don’t call me that. I know how Verán treated you, and it made me sick, but he was a human being. You should know that better than anyone.” There was a note of reproach in Gersha’s voice now. “Would you really have . . . strangled him? You were intimate with him night after night, for green’s sake.”

Tilrey’s fist clenched. “I was intimate with a lot of people.”

“You _lived_ with him.”

As that pained tone sank in, the anger drained abruptly away, leaving Tilrey with a sensation of echoing hollowness at his core. _Is he talking about_ us _? Does he think I could ever hate him that way?_

He kept secrets from Gersha, yes. And lately maybe he took Gersha for granted because Gersha would always be waiting to welcome him back into his bed, warm and eager. But it wasn’t the same at all.

“We’re talking about _Verán_ ,” he said. “The man who once made a bet with his cronies that if he ever got the better of Linnett he would fuck me right in the Council chamber, on the Council table. Which he did.”

The expression on Gersha’s face was so distressed now, both with and _for_ him, that Tilrey tried hastily to turn the provocation into a joke. “My knees were sore for days. Anyway, love, we’re talking about that bastard, and good riddance to him. I never _chose_ to live with him. You know that.”

“I know.” Gersha opened the door to the corridor, moving as if Tilrey had physically pummeled him. “I know what Verán was to you, what kind of man he was. And we’re talking about a meaningless ceremony, which I must attend.”

Tilrey said nothing. But as the door shut behind Gersha, he rose and followed in two long strides, shoving it open again. In the corridor, he caught the Councillor by the shoulder and swung him around.

Gersha went rigid.

Tilrey had meant to kiss him, then to fold him briefly in his arms and whisper, “I understand” or possibly even “I love you.” But his lover’s face was so unnerved—as if Gersha expected a blow—that he ended up simply stroking Gersha’s cheek and giving him a swift, intense look that he hoped would convey what he couldn’t quite voice.

“Until later, then,” he said, going back to his desk.

***

Bors replayed the clip a third time, enlarging the Councillor’s image. Bronn had his back to the surveillance cam as he touched his protector’s face, but judging by Gádden’s reaction, he’d experienced the contact not as affection but as threat.

_Interesting._ Bors leaned back in the narrow seat and tried to ignore the stuffy cabin air and the whine of the plane’s engines. He’d jammed the plastic shutter down so he wouldn’t have to look at the Wastes on his way to Thurskein. Sometimes he had nightmares about Ranek Egil wandering still alive down there, calling his name.

He replayed the clip on his handheld once more. Was it possible the Councillor suspected his secretary of sedition but was too intimidated to report him? It _shouldn’t_ be possible, but maybe Bronn had some dirt on Gádden. Bors had suspected for a while that the two of them had something on Karishkov.

Bronn and Vera Linnett had stopped seeing each other about a ten-day ago, so that lead had gone cold. He’d hoped for a breakthrough from using Irin as his spy, but that, too, was a dead end. His cousin had gotten into the meeting, all right, but Bronn and his two friends didn’t once mention politics. When Bors asked what they did talk about, Irin launched into a gleeful tale of erotic escapades that Bors had to cut short because it was half arousing him and half turning his stomach. Sometimes he felt tempted to slap his cousin.

If only he had something concrete, he could take the evidence straight to the Councillor and bypass the director and Karishkov. More and more, Bors suspected Gersha Gádden would listen to him. The Councillor might not even be surprised.

***

“You think he—what?” said the asset. “You’re still talking about Tilrey Bronn? The Supervisor’s son?”

Bors kept his face blank as stone, as he did when talking to Laborers in any official capacity. He didn’t release the young asset’s gaze. “Did I mention anyone else, lad?”

Malkien Sollentaal shook his head, looking a little lost. A boy of twenty-two, pale and slight with large, winsome violet eyes, he’d worked the honeypot beat for a while, according to Glommer’s file, toiling for Supervisor Fernei while reporting to Int/Sec on the side. Now he did some kind of paper pushing in the new Supervisor’s office. His covert job was to sniff out seditious currents in the youth of Thurskein, and he’d successfully rooted out two incipient Hargist cliques, though no full-blown Dissidents.

“I see Tilrey every time he visits here, Fir,” the boy told Bors in his soft Skeinsha burr. “A few times a year.”

Bors resisted the impulse to snap at him. “Which is why I’m asking you whether he’s ever inquired about shirker activity in Sector Six—meeting places, things like that.”

The asset shook his head. “If he’d asked about anything like that, I would have reported it. Honestly, Tilrey Bronn’s kind of uptight, Fir. He talks like a Strutter, and he acts like a Strutter, and he’s totally devoted to that Councillor of his.”

_Fucking Glommer. Please don’t tell me you sent me on this trip for nothing._ “Your handler,” Bors said through clenched teeth, “says you have a _lot_ to say about Tilrey Bronn. That you won’t shut up about him, in fact. That naturally makes me wonder what _he’s_ been saying to _you_. You do know the tricks shirkers use to approach young recruits? Deploring recent local incidents of ‘injustice’, for instance?”

“Of course, Fir!” The boy looked miffed. “I’ve been through the training. If Tilrey tried to recruit me, I’d know, but we never talk about anything political. Just skiing and who’s fucking who in Sector Six, and, um . . .” A blush spread over his pale face. “Well, I used to have a terrible crush on him, so we’d flirt, but he told me to find somebody my own age.”

Bors felt his own cheeks flush as if they were mirroring the boy’s, as if he were the one remembering the rebuff. What was wrong with him?

Sollentaal raised his head and looked straight at Bors, every inch of him expressing a guileless eagerness to please. “Was I supposed to be targeting Tilrey Bronn, Fir? My handler never mentioned him in the briefings. Do you want me to, well, entrap him or something? I could give it a go—”

“No.” Bors did snap now, rising to his feet. Glommer had a lot to answer for—and he was back at fucking square one. “The Republic appreciates your service, young man. Now forget we ever had this conversation.”


	8. Every Vow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for this one ending on a bit of a cliffhanger, but it was getting very long. :)
> 
> On Tumblr, mysweetacrimony suggested I make a list of the characters in this series and their many names and nicknames, which is a great memory aid for me, too. :) [Here's the list.](https://welcome-to-oslov.tumblr.com/post/183124186112/could-you-make-a-list-of-all-the-characters-i) If you notice any I've left out, please let me know!

The Linnett woman was at least six months pregnant now. It didn’t show much on her willowy frame, but the smock she wore was a give-away. When she eased herself down at the Restaurant table, her husband assisted with a solicitous hand on her back, smiling possessively.

Bors would have found a way to hurt anyone who smiled at him like that. He’d been feeling oddly sympathetic to Vera Linnett in the months since she ended her trysts with Tilrey Bronn, because she looked as miserable as he felt.

Would she find new reasons for happiness once the child was born? Bors knew he was supposed to do all that, too, someday—marriage, family—but it was hard to imagine finding a mate he trusted never to mock or belittle him. And what if their kids were entitled little brats like the born-Upstarts he’d gone to school with? What if they were ashamed of their own father?

Fluorescence flickered and hummed around him in the Blinding Tank. Sometimes he imagined it pulsed in time with his blood flow, measuring out his life in wretched, shadowless seconds.

He swivelled his chair and forced his eyes back to the screen he was supposed to be watching: a fiftysomething Laborer Prime teacher who was suspected of interpreting Whyberg for her students in an unorthodox manner. All she ever did in her spare time was sit in the staff lounge and gossip about her favorite streams and her colleagues’ sex lives, and the boredom was making him want to claw his own eyes out.

Behind him, Kranik called, “Hey, Fir, I spy your favorite person, the Councillor’s secretary. Restaurant, AG-4853-1. Wanna watch him while I keep an eye on your target?”

Damn the little Drudge screen minder. He was way too observant.

“I’m doing just fine here,” Bors said primly, as if Tilrey—somehow in his head they were on a first-name basis now—didn’t interest him in the least. While Kranik strolled off to watch another screen, he discreetly swivelled himself back to check the Restaurant feed again.

Sure enough, Tilrey Bronn and Gersha Gádden were occupying a window booth, just visible over Vera Linnett’s shoulder. Bors switched to a closer view that gave him glimpses of their faces, albeit from near the ceiling.

The image was blue-tinged and low-rez, like all surveillance views, and Restaurant feeds offered no audio for privacy reasons. But he couldn’t miss the way the two men’s gazes locked on each other, shutting out everyone else in the room.

Their lips curved in smiles of complicity. Gádden laughed at something his secretary was saying, and Tilrey clasped his protector’s hand across the table, their fingers entwining on the white cloth. If Tilrey noticed Vera Linnett sitting nearby, he gave no sign; clearly she didn’t exist for him at this moment.

Bors turned himself back to the screen he was supposed to be watching. He didn’t realize he was biting his lip till he tasted blood, and then he kept biting for a little longer, just to feel it.

In the six months since his fruitless trip to Thurskein, he’d thrown himself into his work. He’d caught several dozen petty rule breakers and two suspected shirkers, both of whom promptly disappeared into interrogation cells. Bors wasn’t told their ultimate fate, and he didn’t ask. The director praised him for his diligence, and occasionally reminded him to go home to bed. He’d seen Kai five times and paid him liberally with sap, those encounters being the only thing he ever spent his work-rations on.

He’d managed to steer clear of Irin. He’d sat through an awkward teatime with his mother and listened to her complaints about noisy people in her dorm. He’d touched the Spark whenever he passed it stencilled on a building, just to remind him of his humble origins and strengthen his resolve not to waste his time on foolishness. He’d done his best to forget about Tilrey Bronn, and he’d only followed him two or three times.

Okay. Maybe six or seven. Maybe ten or twelve. He’d expanded his collection of surveillance clips featuring tender moments between Tilrey and Gádden like the one he’d been watching just now. But he’d long ago given up any hope of catching the young secretary in an act of sedition.

When Bors remembered his feverish eagerness to put Tilrey Bronn in cuffs, he was ashamed. Could he really claim to be the neutral, objective eye that a good analyst should be, or even a lowly screen minder?

No. In his zeal to get close to Tilrey, he’d perverted his duty, used it in an attempt to glorify himself, and he’d been punished with failure and was still paying in self-recrimination.

Still, it might not hurt to take one more look, to burn the hateful image of those two happy lovers into his brain. Just . . . one more.

***

“Rishka.” Gersha stroked Tilrey’s palm, trying to get his attention back from whatever had caught it across the room. “Did you hear me?”

Tilrey’s eyes snapped back to his, translucent and guileless. “Yes, sweetheart. You said Albertine Linnett wants another interview with me.”

The trip to Harbour was less than a month away now. They’d had vaccinations and security clearance interviews and policy briefings; they’d spent hours listening to language recordings and practicing conversations. Tonight, in fact, they’d been attempting to speak Harbourer exclusively, until Gersha ruined it just now with his impatience to be understood.

He tugged his hand gently out of Tilrey’s and sat back; his forearm had been getting numb. Peering across the room as discreetly as he could, he spotted the Linnett clan camped out at a table behind a potted palm—Albertine; her husband, Arvan Jena; Vera; and the Linden son-in-law.

Of course. Tilrey had been scrutinizing Albertine, who was in charge of the mission to Bettevy. Perhaps he was concerned about her request to see him again.

“You don’t have to worry about that interview, love.” Gersha’s boot nudged Tilrey’s ankle under the table. “Probably just another of the endless technicalities. Albertine’s in awe of your language skills and your knowledge of the old texts—she told me so.”

Tilrey ripped his gaze away from the Linnett party, his foot nuzzling Gersha’s calf in turn. “Oh, I know. We got on well last time. She’s very easy to talk to . . . for a high Upstart.” His toe gave Gersha a playful poke. “She said she might even try to get me an Int/Sec clearance when we return, so I can work on decoding some of those Harbourer telegraph transmissions.”

Warm pride flushed Gersha’s cheeks. Unlike most of his colleagues, Albertine had always been open to recognizing merit in anyone, and it was about time Tilrey got some credit for his accomplishments. If he claimed he preferred to do his work behind the scenes or between the sheets, that was only because most Upstarts refused to accept him in any other role.

Gersha eased his knee between Tilrey’s, matching the sly smile in his lover’s eyes, which were bright from the cider they’d been drinking. Nothing was stopping him from rising and sliding into Tilrey’s banquette and pulling him into a deep, intimate kiss. Only a few stodgy old diners might bat an eye, and who cared about them? But it was fun to return to their former habit of concealing their mutual affection in public, limiting themselves to furtive glances or touches until they could go home to bed.

And their bedroom activities had been more . . . active recently. Maybe it was the excitement of the trip that put Tilrey in a good mood. Maybe winning Albertine’s respect, being seen as a skilled professional in his own right, was making him less resentful of the asymmetry between them. Whatever the reason, he’d been ardent, sweet, and inventive lately, and they’d managed not to quarrel about anything stupid for nearly a month. Gersha wished he knew how to make such warm spells last forever, but at least he could enjoy them until winter set in again.

Tilrey’s hand crept under the table, caressing Gersha’s intruding knee, as he regarded the Councillor with a fond smile. “What’s so funny, love?”

“Nothing. Just . . . I’m so proud to be with you.” The old blush stained Gersha’s face. “And not because you’re so beautiful that I could take you right here, right now on this table, or creep under it and, uh, show you how much I adore you. Not because of anything like that.”

“No?” Tilrey asked innocently. But he couldn’t hide the grin that always made Gersha feel as if he were standing in intense sunshine. “You’re not proud of your manly urges, Fir?”

Gersha caught Tilrey’s exploring hand and squeezed it, hard. “All that is . . . better than fine. But I’m proud for the same reason I’ve always been proud, because you’re brilliant and you’re brave and you’re . . .” Was there a way to express his admiration that wouldn’t come out sounding condescending, like a Councillor praising an underling? “Because you’re you,” he finished.

Tilrey squeezed his hand back and said in the same fond undertone, “My little Councillor.”

Again the blush. “All yours.”

***

Another evening, another round of eye-drops, another recommendation-slash-order from the director to go home and get some sleep. Another tram platform in the Sector.

Bors blinked against shockingly bright sunlight, his sensitive lids fluttering. What time was it, and how many hours had he been in the Tank staring at screens? It was summer now, the light unending and merciless, the polar dusk over in a blink. He could barely remember putting on his outergear and taking the long lift ride out of Int/Sec. But at least he knew where he was going—home to draw the shades and collapse in a warm heap with the comforter over his head.

The tram drifted to the platform with its familiar wheeze. Somehow Bors had ended up in the front of the crowd, and he stepped forward automatically, across the gap—

There was nothing there.

In his muzzy state, he’d misjudged the distance. He teetered on the edge, one foot in the void. His weight tipped toward the bright, bright snow far beneath, his hands catching at nothing.

Instantly wide awake, he had time only to think, _So this is my last moment._ This was where he’d dwell for eternity, caught in blinding sunshine beneath blue sky, arms flailing, wind whistling in his ears.

It wasn’t so bad. Bors closed his eyes and let himself go, the vertigo and terror retreating, leaving only the—

Something was yanking him backward by his jacket. Someone had caught him, and instead of falling, he was staggering back onto the platform. And now his legs were turning to putty, the cold air scything his lungs, and someone was holding him upright and saying, “It’s okay, Fir. You’re okay. That was a close call.”

Bors found his footing and tugged himself out of the rescuer’s arms. _A Drudge. A goddamn Drudge. How humiliating._ “I’m fine.”

“Okay, Fir. Just look where you’re going next time.” The Laborer stepped past him into the tram, his deep voice _familiar_. Bors recognized it an instant before he processed the easy stride, the broad shoulders, the profile with its high brow and square jaw.

Tilrey Bronn. His target had saved his life.

 _How dare he?_ Bors’s relief became rage in an instant, his cheeks hot and his temples pounding. He shoved his way through the crowd and across the now-safe gap into the tram.

It was rush hour, no seats available, and the space between him and Tilrey was already full of Sector workers, their parkas giving them extra bulk. The doors snicked shut, and the tram lurched away from the platform and onto the grid.

Bors reached for a handhold, only the sea of down-padded bodies keeping him upright. The flood of adrenaline from his near-fall had heightened his senses, yet he barely felt the press of people or heard their conversations. The world had narrowed to Tilrey’s gray parka at the other end of the car.

The Councillor’s secretary stood with his profile toward Bors, holding on to the top bar. With his free hand, he pushed his hood back, and hair tumbled into his eyes, the burnished gold dark against pale skin.

Had Bors ever been so close to him before? But of course—a few moments ago he’d been much closer. Tilrey’s strong hand, Tilrey’s body against his, Tilrey’s arms holding him up. _He saved me. Does he know who I am? Did he do it on purpose?_

Anger mingled with adrenaline and raced from Bors’s toes to his fingertips, setting his heart pounding furiously. He dropped his usual caution and stared straight at his target.

Maybe Tilrey wanted to insult Bors, to show him he’d won their little game. Only he hadn’t won, and he wouldn’t. Bors put that message into his stare: all his certainty and hatred. _I know what you are. I may have no evidence, but I’ll always know._

As the tram stopped at the Sector gym, Tilrey turned his head and met Bors’s gaze, then dropped his eyes almost immediately. He didn’t get off.

The tram continued around the city’s innermost Ring, the crowd thinner now, giving Bors an unobstructed view of his enemy. Tilrey sent him another brief glance and looked down with a slightly unsettled air, as if Bors were an importunate stranger.

_Don’t play coy with me._

The Central Judiciary building. The Hall of Records. The Quiet Revolution monument: a simple white granite plinth inscribed with the words _order_ and _merit_. Bors kept right on staring. He had no idea what he was doing, no plan, only a certainty that he was finished wearing disguises and lurking in the shadows.

The Restaurant. The Archives. The Defense Hub. The Central Server Farm. The Sanctioned Brothel. People got off and on, but neither of them moved. Tilrey stared out the window, apparently oblivious, but Bors was not fooled.

Finally, when the tram reached the Library and Café stop, Tilrey got off without a glance back. Bors rushed off the tram and followed him along the platform, past the Café’s main entrance.

The young man was still bare-headed, braving the frigid wind that scoured every inch of exposed skin. Bors hugged himself and picked up the pace; today was warm by Redda standards, but still, what was Tilrey thinking?

The platform narrowed to a snowy catwalk along the flank of the building, at least twenty stories up. Tilrey’s were the only footprints in the snow, and Bors took pleasure in obliterating them.

Sun flashed on glass as Tilrey opened an inconspicuous door flush to the building’s façade. He stepped inside unhurriedly, as if he were alone.

Bors bounded over and swung the door in his turn, making no pretense of stealth. When the glare of reflected sunlight cleared from his eyes, he found his quarry waiting for him.

Tilrey stood blocking the mouth of a broad, carpeted passage, arms crossed. He was looking at Bors with no expression, and he suddenly seemed disturbingly tall.

Bors stopped short, his pulse loud in his ears. He felt sure all his feelings were written on his face, from lust to fear to hatred, and this time he didn’t care enough to wipe it clean the way proper Upstarts did.

“You’re following me, Fir,” Tilrey said. “What do you want?”

Bors said the first thing that popped into his head, the word emerging in a hoarse whisper: “You.”


	9. Every Game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added another tag: Hate Sex. 'Cause I realized that was the best term for the twistedness happening in this chapter. 
> 
> "A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice" is from Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," which Tilrey read as part of his Tangle lit obsession. :)

For a few seconds they looked at each other, both taut as bow-strings. Then Tilrey’s shoulders relaxed. He dropped his arms to his sides and grinned with a flash of white teeth, every inch of him suddenly languid with sensuality in a way that reminded Bors of Kai. “You want me, Fir? Okay. I know a place we can do that.”

He crooked a finger and walked on down the corridor. Bors felt his gorge rise as he followed along a row of doors with keypads. As Tilrey stopped at one to enter a code, he nearly burst out, _No, this is all wrong. That’s not how I want you at all!_

But his head was a little cooler now, and his Int/Sec training told him he’d been mistaken; Tilrey Bronn had no idea who he was. Or rather, he mistook Bors for a bored functionary who’d followed him off the tram in hopes of a quick, anonymous fuck.

And that was good, wasn’t it? All Bors had to do was play along. Maybe, if they made this a regular thing, he could even gain Tilrey’s trust. He just had to stop shuddering as if he were still teetering on the tram platform, one foot in midair.

“What is this place?” he asked, as Tilrey ushered him into the most beautiful room he’d ever seen.

The ceiling and back wall were glass, segmented like a greenhouse and exposed to the sun. Bors barely registered a polished slate floor, a bar, and the severe angles of R11 sofas and chairs. Everything was drowned in the light that flooded the space, casting it in a spectral blue-green glow like the interior of an iceberg. Bors remembered a Feudal story his mother used to tell him about a hero who explored the palace of Winter herself.

“Private lounge for the R11 set,” Tilrey said, peeling off his parka, scarf, and gloves and tossing them to the floor.

The place was as hot as a greenhouse, too. Bors stripped off his own parka, a dreamlike torpor sneaking over him. “How’d you know the code?”

“I used to be a kettle boy, Fir.” Tilrey perched on one of the sofas to remove his boots. “Councillors would bring me here for a bit of decadent living. ‘A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice _._ ’” He rose with easy grace and unbelted his jerkin, shrugging it open so that Bors could see his tight-fitting shirt and the bulge in his trousers. “Well? You still up for it?”

Bors was abruptly aware that he was hard, too. Had that just happened, or had he been that way all along? Surely not outside, surely not on the tram . . . And now that he’d noticed it himself, he felt sure that Tilrey’s insolent stare was focused right on his erection. The sensation of being watched made his head swim.

Tilrey rolled his shoulders and let his jerkin slide to the floor, the knowing display reminding Bors again of Kai. The secretary wasn’t an addict to Bors’s knowledge, but was he expecting payment? That was the only way anything made sense; a man like this had no reason to want him.

Hoping he’d figured out what was expected, Bors tugged a vial from the interior pocket of his tunic and held it out. “Here. I’m afraid I have just one on me at the moment, but if you . . . I could . . .”

He trailed off as Tilrey took the vial, unstoppered it, turned it upside down, and poured the contents out on the gleaming slate floor.

Bors stared at the dark, sticky puddle between them, beginning to feel out of his depth. “I don’t understand,” he stammered. “I thought I—I mean, you must want _something_.”

Tilrey flicked the empty vial away and crossed his arms. His expression remained neutral, but the fixed blue gaze sent shivers of desire and fear up and down Bors’s spine.

“I do want something, Fir. But not that, thanks.” One finger pointed at the floor. “If you want to have me, get down there and lick it up.”

Bors’s breath caught, a frail thread breaking. “You’re not serious?”

“I’m very serious, Fir.”

Bors tried to draw himself up in proud outrage, again painfully conscious of his cock straining beneath his tunic. Proper Upstart responses swarmed through his mind: _I’ll do no such thing. You should be ashamed of yourself._

But he didn’t feel much like an Upstart right now. And Tilrey’s expression was so strange, almost solemn. Maybe this was a test of sorts to see how far he’d bend, a game that the secretary liked to play with his Upstart sex partners. And that, too, could be a valuable clue.

Bors looked from Tilrey to the puddle of sap and back again, his spy’s intuition working. “You want to see me crawl. Because I’m a Strutter and you’re not.”

Tilrey shrugged.

It was close enough to a yes. Bors sank to his knees on the hard slate, a warm rush of triumph adding itself to his arousal. _This is what you want—to humiliate me. I always knew you were a shirker, but now I really understand you._

He barely even felt ashamed as he lowered himself to hands and knees and licked at the sweet, sticky puddle. Normally he had a horror of dirt and micro-organisms, but his head was light with a sense of mastery, and his cock was heavy between his legs. He lapped gingerly, then more committedly, the sap intensifying the sense of unreality as it sang through his central nervous system.

When he was about half done, a hand tangled itself in his hair and pulled his head up. Bors went utterly still, his body obeying the instinct to go limp in the stronger man’s grasp.

“Get up,” Tilrey said, his voice cold, and released his hair. Bors got up.

Then he was being shoved up against the bar. Hands were all over him—yanking his head back, baring his throat, squeezing his ass and thighs, reaching under his tunic to manhandle his cock.

And he wasn’t fighting—didn’t _want_ to fight. The warm, wet mouth sucking at his throat tore an excited moan from him. The scrape of teeth made his back arch. The hand on his waist, holding him in place, felt _right_ , and so did the powerful leg that forced itself between his thighs. He wanted this, needed it, needed it desperately

“You want a kiss, then, Fir?” A hiss in his ear.

Bors nodded. It was all he wanted. That mouth sucked viciously on his throat again, then on the point of his chin, then on the side of his jaw, each time leaving an aching wet spot behind. Stubble burned against Bors’s sensitive skin. The thigh jammed itself fast against his cock, rutting and withdrawing, teasing him. And he knew that whatever he had to do for release, he’d do.

A nip and tug on his bottom lip, warm breath on his cheeks, and Bors moaned again in a way he’d never let himself do with Kai—abject, desperate. Then his mouth no longer belonged to him. His lips opened to a tongue that explored him systematically, tangling with his own tongue and darting down his throat. Hands tousled his hair, tugging till the roots burned. And all of it seemed to melt him, to make him more and more pliant, opening him like a green bud in the greenhouse heat.

_Maybe I’m a whore deep down, after all._ Normally the notion would have petrified him, but now—

All of a sudden, the mouth was gone. The hands were gone. The thigh was gone. Bors grunted gutturally, unspeakably bereft—only to open his eyes and see that Tilrey had gone to his knees before him. Those hands snuck under his tunic again, pinching and squeezing and taking hold of his cock—not teasing this time, but purposeful.

Bors squirmed and strained toward the hands that had pulled him back from the abyss not an hour before. He whimpered; possibly he begged. His mind refused to countenance any of it, but his body knew what was coming, and it was ready.

When those clever hands unfastened his trousers and drew him out, he arched his back again in helpless eagerness. And then—those fingers tight around the base. That strong, supple tongue. That mouth like a single muscle, sealing itself around his most sensitive part. That eager suckling, at once tender and ravenous. He couldn’t survive it and he had to have it, had to, had to—

***

The poor fool came almost immediately.

Tilrey swallowed out of long-ingrained habit, though he knew he could have spat Dartán’s seed into his hand without adverse consequences. He laved the man with his tongue. He teased the trousers all the way down.

Then he took hold of Dartán’s slender, fragile waist, spun him around, shoved him down till his forehead pressed the bartop, and spread his thighs wide.

“Now I’m going to take you,” he said, bending low over the pale, trembling form, trying not to shudder with his own arousal—he needed to keep his head clear. “You want that, don’t you?”

There was a brief hesitation. Perhaps the little snitch was engaged in an inner struggle.

“You need to tell me, Fir.” Tilrey spat into his hand and waited till he heard a soft whimper and saw a nod.

He knew perfectly well he shouldn’t be doing this. Irin would be furious if he found out. But Tilrey hadn’t planned any of it, had he? He’d seen a man, a stranger, about to fall to his death, and he’d reached out to save him the way anyone would.

The stringy little Upstart with the reddish eyelids had looked familiar, but it wasn’t until they were on the tram, and the man started looking daggers at Tilrey, that he’d registered the resemblance to Irin Dartán. Then he put two and two together. This was the Int/Sec analyst who’d entrapped and killed Ranek Egil, the man who’d tried to enlist Irin to spy and rat on Tilrey himself. He was Raised, and he was a true believer, and he’d stared at Tilrey on the tram like he wanted to fuck him and dissect him all at once, when all he could really do was _watch._

Tilrey had no idea why Bors Dartán was suddenly approaching him in the open. Maybe it was a stratagem. But if the man had an actual case against Tilrey, he would have made a different kind of move by now.

So Tilrey had yielded to an irresistible impulse to take a bit of revenge. It was he who’d be doing the dissecting tonight, and the pathetic little wraith would thank him afterward.

_You want to see me crawl._ Why yes, maybe he did.

He didn’t let himself be rough. He kept his entry gentle, nearly as gentle as he’d been with Gersha the first time. But he couldn’t stop himself from asking incredulously, “Are you fresh, Fir?”

Another soft affirmative whimper.

Tilrey reached around and seized the man’s cock, already hardening again. “Good,” he said, working his second finger inside. “That’ll make me your first. Do you like knowing that?”

The spy’s body hitched in a sob. If he was faking his abject eagerness, he was doing an extremely good job of it.

In the end, it wasn’t very satisfying. The passage was tight, and the man wriggled and moaned fetchingly, but this was nothing like his first time fucking Gersha. Nor was it anything like the first time Gersha had bent his head and licked sap from Tilrey’s hand, showing them both how beautiful a willing submission could be. Gersha’s surrender was an incredible aphrodisiac because he _knew_ Gersha, knew his fine-tuned pride, intelligence, and sensitivity. This was more like taking advantage of an adolescent desperate not to die a virgin.

Tilrey knew he wouldn’t be able to come, and he didn’t, though he dutifully brought the spy to a second climax.

What was he trying to do, he wondered now—avenge Egil by giving his murderer an orgasm? What could revenge even mean in this case? When you came down to it, Bors Dartán had just been doing his job, playing his role in the system, groveling for high Upstarts just as Tilrey himself had done for so many years.

When he’d brought Dartán off, he pulled out, tucked himself back in, and went and found his jerkin. He put it on and flopped down on one of the pristine sofas to enjoy the sunlight. _Good little whore. You’ve been out of the game a while, but you haven’t forgotten a thing._

It took Dartán a good five minutes to arrange his own clothes and straighten up. He seemed to be sobbing, his back turned to Tilrey, but he was discreet about it.

Tilrey propped his feet on the cushions. He remembered fucking Besha for the first time, making his touchy pride submit. But while Besha’s shallow selfishness tickled him, Dartán’s earnestness made his skin crawl. _Don’t you realize you’re a murderer?_ Besha had done things as bad as Dartán and probably worse, but at least he knew it.

When the Int/Sec analyst finally turned to face Tilrey, his face was impassive, though the signs of recent tears were unmistakable. “Thanks,” he whispered.

Tilrey swung his feet to the ground. No use prolonging the game any more.

“I know who you are,” he said, picking up one of his boots. “I know you’ve been watching me and following me. Yes, I have my connections, _Fir_.”

Dartán stood motionless, his pale eyes wide with alarm.

Tilrey rose and went in search of the other boot, then his parka. He waited to speak again till he could face the spy, looking straight into those red-rimmed, watery eyes:

“I hope you got what you wanted today, because there won’t be a repeat performance. And if I ever notice you bothering me or Councillor Gádden again, I will tell your friend Councillor Karishkov, and he will have you dismissed from Int/Sec, and possibly Lowered if he’s really annoyed, because he listens to me.” _Because he knows if he doesn’t, I’ll reveal the secret Drudge love child he has stashed away in Thurskein._ “Do we understand each other?”

The poor wretch continued to stare as if deprived of speech. At last, he managed a nod.

“Good.” Tilrey wound the scarf around his neck and found his missing glove under an armchair. “I hear you’re a tribute to the Republic, Fir, a real rooter out of shirkers. I wouldn’t want to derail your career just when it’s getting started.”

Satisfied that he had all his belongings, he strode to the door, turning back for one final look at his handiwork. “And I’ll have that image of you on your hands and knees licking up sap in my head for a _good long time_.”

***

Bors was dreaming.

He was back in the beautiful hothouse room, stretched out on one of the sofas. Tilrey Bronn bent over him and kissed his forehead, oh so gently, and then he stroked Bors’s hair back and said, “You need to rest, love. You work too hard.”

“I do,” Bors said sleepily. His limbs were so heavy, as if he’d drunk a full vial of sap, and nothing made sense. Because now the light had changed, and Tilrey was standing above him, and he was pouring sap on Bors’s face, cold and sticky, and saying in a snarling voice, “Drink it, Fir.”

Bors struggled to swallow the sap, but he kept choking, only the sap tasted like come, and he _wanted_ to drink it, he did, but Tilrey was laughing at him, his beautiful lips twisted, his blue eyes flashing mockingly as he said, “I hear you’re a tribute to the Republic.”

Bors woke with a jolt and sat up drenched in sweat, his temples pounding. Tilrey’s derisive laughter echoed in his head. He drew into himself, hugging his knees through the blankets, trying to erase all the dream-sensations from his memory.

But they were too real, because now he had actual experience to draw on and not just surveillance images and fantasy. Nearly sixty hours had passed since that horrible afternoon, but he couldn’t forget the tang of Tilrey’s sweat, the span of his hands, the width and thrust of his cock. Dear god, Bors could still feel that cock inside him, and the worst part was that he wanted it there.

_He hasn’t beaten me. He’ll never beat me._ The determination thudded in time with his heart, keeping him alive along with his loyalty and his hatred of treason and his burning need to protect the Republic. But he couldn’t stop his dreaming mind from betraying him. It wanted . . . something else.

_Your burning love will freeze you solid._ He’d never really understood the old proverb before, but now he knew it meant you should be careful what you wish for.

***

“Fir Dartán?” A gentle poke to his shoulder. “Fir Dartán, I brought you some tea.”

Bors shook off the hand and sat up, muttering, “Don’t wan’ it.” He’d been sleeping at his desk in the Tank again. From every direction, flickering screens assailed his eyes, making his lids flutter. “Dark. Need dark.”

“Shh, it’s okay, Fir.” Kranik was pushing a tea mug at him; the steam made Bors’s nostrils flare. “Just have a few sips and you’ll feel better. I saw the Director out in the main hall, and she could pop in here any minute. You want her to see you hard at work, don’t you?”

_Yes. No._ Bors could still hear Tilrey saying, _I wouldn’t want to derail your career_ with that horrid fake concern.

No, he’d never give that shirker slut the satisfaction of seeing him dismissed. He grabbed the mug from Kranik and took a gulp. The tea was bitter and burned his tongue, but he needed that kind of punishment to get him back on track, and he took another sip and another.

If only he could sleep properly at home in his bed. If only the dreams would stop. If only Tilrey had let him fall to his death three days ago. Then he’d be dwelling in that moment of brightness forever, under the blue sky, and not enduring this humiliation that festered like a blister.

What did you say when you invoked the Spark? Bors tried to remember the words his mother used to murmur each time she touched the wall stencil: _Cast your brightness into each day of my life. Electrify my purposes. Drive out the shadows of evil._

He choked, and Kranik, still hovering, patted his shoulder. “Take it easy, Fir.”

For an instant, Bors felt intensely grateful to the young Laborer for looking out for him. Then he reran the words and tone in his head—was there the slightest hint of mockery?—and decided Kranik’s concern was no more genuine than Tilrey’s.

“I know you don’t like me,” he said, giving his subordinate a hard stare. “You’re only hovering around me because I’m the only man in the entire office you haven’t blown yet, and you’re wondering why I won’t let you.”

The second they were out of his mouth, the words sounded nastier and more provoking than he’d intended. What did he even know about Kranik? Just rumors—the young Drudge had never actually propositioned him.

But Kranik only laughed pleasantly, letting the insult slide off him, and reached over to adjust the scarf that Bors had knotted around his neck. “Why would I hover, Fir? You seem spoken for.”

“Excuse me?”

An innocent arch of the brow. “Somebody must have given you these.”

Understanding, Bors cinched the scarf tighter around his neck, doing his best to hide the livid marks that Tilrey’s ( _beautiful, sucking_ ) mouth had left there. “That’s none of your fucking business,” he said—then realized that Kranik had spoken without hostility, and smiled queasily in an effort to turn it into a joke. “I prefer to keep my private life private, that’s all.”

Kranik smiled back, slouching against the desk in a disrespectful fashion that Bors didn’t have the strength to reprimand him for just now. Maybe he thought they were more on a level now he’d seen the evidence of Bors’s own indiscretion.

“Anyway,” he said, “you’re not the only guy in Int/Sec I haven’t blown, not by a long shot, Fir. There’s Angbrei, who’s old and practically drooling, and a few more like that; and Luddten, who only likes women; and of course Egil—but I guess he doesn’t count anymore, does he?”

Bors took another quick sip of tea. Egil’s name still made him tense, but at least since Tilrey had started haunting his dreams, he’d had relief from his visions of Egil wandering the Wastes.

“Why ‘of course’? Egil?” he asked. “You were here then—did you actually come on to him?”

Kranik’s pretty blue eyes widened. “Oh, c’mon, Fir. You must know Egil wasn’t interested in that. I mean, if he were, he would’ve made a pass at _you_ back when you two were so tight. Some people thought you must’ve fucked him to get close to him, but I knew better.”

“Of course I didn’t fuck him!” Bors pushed his chair back, suddenly much more awake. “But what do you mean, he ‘wasn’t interested’?” Initially he _had_ worried Egil wanted him that way, but after the fears receded, it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why not. It wasn’t as if he was irresistible.

“He didn’t have any interest in fucking anybody, ever.” Kranik shrugged. “I did like him, actually. We had a civil little discussion, and he explained to me, it just wasn’t his thing.”

_No interest in fucking anybody._ Bors’s throat tightened, hard, as he remembered how Karishkov and the Director had always laughed off his concerns about Tilrey’s regular meetings with Egil, explaining that Gersha was simply sharing the boy with his best friend. _There’s one thing a boy like that is good for_ , Karishkov had said, _and it’s nothing political_.

But if Egil didn’t _want_ that one thing, even with Tilrey . . .

Bors stood up so quickly he nearly spilled tea all over his desk, his pulse hectic now. “Kranik, can you promise me what you’re saying is true? Egil described himself as completely asexual?”

“Sure. I mean, he said so. Unless you think I’m just so unattractive he was trying to let me down easy.”

“No!” Bors felt a wild grin split his face. “You couldn’t be more attractive right now. You’re a lifesaver!”

Ignoring Kranik’s perplexed smile, he banged open the drawer where he kept his most precious files and fished out the envelope marked _TB and RE meetings_.

He wouldn’t go to the Director or Karishkov again—no, he knew better than that. They’d made it clear they didn’t want to touch Tilrey because they didn’t want to piss off Councillor Gádden.

So he would go directly to the person they were afraid of.

Of course, there might be another explanation for those meetings, something the Councillor knew about and countenanced. But Bors’s intuition told him otherwise. The next step he took would be risky, maybe even career-ending. But he didn’t believe Councillor Gádden was corrupt or a Dissident sympathizer. And he didn’t care anymore about anything but wiping the look of pity off Tilrey Bronn’s face for good.

_I know what you are. I’ve got you._ He’d gone all the way to Thurskein, and the whole time, what he wanted had been right there in front of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, did Tilrey go too far with Bors? Or did Bors deserve every bit of it? He _did_ get something he wanted ... sort of.


	10. Every Breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we've reached the end of this story! More to come soon. So many thanks to everyone who read or left kudos, and special thanks for the insightful comments that make me feel like I'm not alone in exploring this imaginary world. <3

At nearly eight on seventh-night, when Gersha always worked late, a knock came on the office door.

Tilrey was at the gym, leaving no one to field impromptu visitors, so Gersha ignored it at first. But one of them must have left the outer door unlocked, because the next thing he knew, the intruder was knocking briskly on the inner door, practically in his ear. He jumped up with a muttered curse and went to open it, expecting to see one of his colleagues—Besha, perhaps, offering takeout and wanting to gossip, or that bore Ekorin.

Instead, he found a young man of no higher than R7 or R8 Level, spindly and pale and wearing large, round glasses. “Bors Dartán, Fir Councillor,” the young man said, his gaze jittering nervously. “Int/Sec analyst, third class, with a private matter to discuss with you.”

Gersha’s first thought was that a third-class analyst didn’t belong in his office. What sort of nuisance was this? Then the man’s name registered, and he went cold.

With an effort of will, he managed to keep his voice neutral, with a touch of haughtiness. “Of course. You’re the lad that unearthed Egil’s treason.” _And I despise you for it, though you may just have been doing your duty._

Dartán acknowledged this with a modest bob of his head. Clearly Gersha’s status intimidated him, but his spine looked stiff with determination.

“It’s about Egil that I come to you now, Fir Councillor,” he said. “What I have to say may or may not already be known to you, but I feel a strong ob—obligation to present the evidence regardless, because it involves a party close to you.”

Was Karishkov behind this, trying to outfox Gersha again? Resolving not to show any concern, Gersha sat back down and stretched indolently in the desk chair. He nodded as if to say, _Very well, speak if you must._

He hadn’t offered the analyst a chair, so the young man remained at attention, his arms awkward at his sides. “I’m going to show you a series of surveillance images, Fir Councillor. All taken from the hallways of vacant apartment blocks during approximately the three years before Fir Egil was exiled.”

Gersha nodded, tenting his fingers under his chin. Where was this going? “And what should I look for in these images?”

Instead of explaining, the analyst simply produced a tablet, swiped something up, and handed it to Gersha. “I’ll leave that for you to decide.”

***

Tilrey had dozed off on the couch. His cheek rested on a Harbourer phrase book, his hair was damp, and the belt of his bathrobe trailed on the floor.

Gersha stood over him too long, just looking. Memorizing the curve of the forehead, the knob of the shoulder, the elegant bones of the bare ankle, the lashes that lay dark against the left cheek.

He knew every inch of this body intimately, and he thought he knew Tilrey’s mind, too—from the light-filled domains of pride, integrity, and intelligence to the darker corners inhabited by cruelty, grudges, anger. He _wanted_ to think he knew.

Was this the last time he would be able to look at his lover this way?

“I’m here, love,” he said softly.

Tilrey opened his eyes—puzzled at first, then smiling as he reached full awareness. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said, and sat up, patting the couch beside him. “Come sit with me.”

Gersha sat down, keeping an arm’s length between them. He wanted to hold this moment, just to live in it, savoring the faint flush on Tilrey’s cheeks and the arc of his smile in the instant before Tilrey realized something was wrong.

A blink, and the moment was over. Far too observant, Tilrey drew himself up, put his feet on the ground, and pulled the robe tight, the smile fading. “What is it?”

Gersha knew his own face was pale, and his fingers wouldn’t stop playing with the pleating of his tunic. He lowered his head.

But he couldn’t dance around it and give Tilrey time to think of an alibi, as Tilrey inevitably would. He had to chuck it all out on the table at once and see what happened.

“You were seeing Ranek Egil,” he said, forcing himself to meet Tilrey’s eyes. “For three years, from the time when he interrogated you in Int/Sec to his exile, you met him every month in a vacant apartment block, staying for an hour or two each time. You never told me about this. What were the two of you doing?”

Tilrey had gone very still. When Gersha finished, silence descended on the room, the two of them simply looking at each other.

To Gersha’s surprise, Tilrey broke the gaze first. His shoulders slumped. When he raised his eyes again, they gleamed with tears, but the rest of his face was a steel door closed in Gersha’s face.

“Do you want me to lie?” he asked. “To tell you a story that sets your mind at rest? I could, you know. I’m good at that.”

Something broke in Gersha’s chest, and Tilrey’s image blurred as his own eyes swam. But he managed to keep his voice steady. “No lies. I beg of you.”

“The last time something like this happened, you didn’t bother to get my side of the story. You had me packed off to a cell.”

Gersha’s eyes ached with the effort of withholding tears; he blinked and felt them spill hot down his cheeks. “That will not happen again.”

“No?” Tilrey cocked his head. “And what if I tell the truth, love, and it’s not what you want to hear?”

“I already—” He swallowed hard, finding it hard to form words. “I already know.”

And he did. All Tilrey’s late nights and mysterious meetings made sense now. So many things took on new significance in this light, from Tilrey’s willingness to ally himself with corrupt actors like Besha to his bizarre arrest in Thurskein.

In his heart of hearts, Gersha had known all this time he stood on the edge of a precipice. He’d been raised to believe that Dissent and reformism led inevitably to Dissidence, yet he’d thrown his upbringing aside because he knew the system had hurt Tilrey, and he loved Tilrey. He’d let Tilrey play on his sympathies and his sense of justice, over and over, until he found himself toppling a Supervisor in Thurskein and leading a movement for reform in the Council.

And the whole time he’d managed to convince himself he was doing nothing wrong.

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and swallowed again, trying to maintain some kind of grip on himself. He needed to assess the extent of the damage. “And Ranek? It’s true, then? He recruited you—or you recruited him?”

“Gersha.” Strong hands tugged his own away from his face and clasped them fast. “I know Egil was your friend, but there was a side of him you didn’t know. He used both of us. He played on your fears to get me into that cell, and then he threatened to keep me there until I agreed to meet with him covertly. He used techniques to break down my resistance—nasty ones. He knew I could be a valuable asset.”

“He hurt you?” Gersha remembered how weak and shaken Tilrey had been when he emerged from that cell, and how he’d immediately bounced back, or seemed to.

A desperate hope clawed its way to the surface of his mind. Maybe Tilrey had lived in fear as long as Ranek was alive. “Was he coercing you that whole time? Making you work with him?” He forced himself to look steadily at Tilrey again, because he needed to gauge the honesty of Tilrey’s initial reaction to the question, as well as his answer. “If you’ve gotten caught up in something against your will, I swear to help you.”

_Look at me. Say yes._

But Tilrey dropped his eyes. “Now you’re practically feeding me the lie you want me to tell, love. I think we’re past that.”

Gersha’s heart sank. He couldn’t find the strength to tear his hands free. “You’re saying . . .”

“Egil tried to coerce me. Yes. But I got the upper hand, and I listened to him, and when I went to meet with him, I went of my own free will.” The blue eyes fixed on Gersha’s again, shining with something that could be pride. “He called it a reform movement at first, a movement of both Upstarts and Laborers.”

“But it wasn’t just about reform.” The words came out in a whisper. Ranek had seduced Tilrey with idealistic notions, just as Tilrey had in turn seduced Gersha.

Gersha remembered the Dissident incidents he’d studied in school—the sabotage of three vital factories in Karkei, the bombing of a tram in Redda, and a sabotage in the Wastes that had left nearly a dozen loyal soldiers of the Republic dead of exposure. Granted, all those things took place generations ago, but what difference did it make? Trying to tear down the system led inevitably to chaos. And chaos led to Unraveling.

“What have they done?” he asked, his voice shaking with dread. “What have they made you do?”

Tilrey’s hands released his. “Nothing! I’ve done virtually nothing you don’t know about. I understand what you’ve been raised to believe, Gersha. But we aren’t talking about blowing up Sector buildings, sabotaging power stations, or laying siege to Redda. I had the same fears at first.”

Now it was Tilrey who was being naïve, Gersha thought. “So they’re using you as their spy in the Council and their puppet, encouraging you to push a reform agenda. You’re passing inside information to them—don’t tell me you’re not. How much have they even told you about their greater plan?”

Tilrey shook his head, his face becoming that closed door again. “What little I do know, I can’t tell you. Other people’s lives are at stake. If you really want to know . . .”

_You could join us._ The unspoken words hung in the air like smoke wafting from an explosion.

For a moment, Gersha actually allowed himself to consider the possibility. Then his own steel door slammed shut.

“You’re mad, and Ranek was mad,” he said, drawing himself up like the scion of a proud bloodline that he was. “There’s only one thing shirkers ever want—to take over and run the government by themselves. And if they do that, _I’ll_ end up exiled—you understand that, don’t you?”

_If they were in control, they’d send us to the Wastes,_ his uncle used to say about Laborers who didn’t know their place. _Every last one of us._

It was self-evident, yet Tilrey looked a little stunned. “You really believe that, after everything we’ve been through together? That we can’t level things out without overturning everything?”

There was anger in his voice, but also pain, as if he’d sincerely hoped to win Gersha over to his point of view. And it was that note of regret that cut Gersha the deepest, because he wanted more than anything to say yes to Tilrey one more time.

The realization opened a calm space inside him, drying his tears and steadying his voice. “I don’t know, Rishka. But I know what I am—a Councillor. I swore an oath to uphold the Republic, not undermine it.”

Tilrey’s face had gone disturbingly blank again. “So . . . what now?”

Visions of interrogation cells flickered in Gersha’s head, and he knew Tilrey was having the same thoughts. But there was no point in pretending, to himself or to Tilrey, that he could even entertain such a possibility.

“Technically,” he said in a flat voice, “it is my duty to report you and give Int/Sec the opportunity to wring every last mite of information out of your head.”

“But you won’t.”

“No. I won’t.” Gersha’s chest heaved in a long sigh. “I don’t have that in me. I will not dismiss you from your posting, either, at least not yet. That could attract notice.”

“But?”

“But I will take every measure in my power to ensure you can’t use your position in service of the Republic’s enemies. And our trip to Harbour—you’ll need to find a reason to recuse yourself from that. A diplomatic mission is too sensitive to be risked.”

He expected Tilrey to accept this with a sad bow of his head—it was, after all, the least concession one could ask of him. So it was an unwelcome surprise when, instead, Tilrey grinned with a cold gleam in his eye. “You’ll need to explain your reasoning to Fir’n Councillor Linnett.”

“We’ll say you’re ill or have family matters keeping you here. As for her wanting to give you a security clearance—well, obviously, that won’t happen. I’ll find an excuse.”

“No, Gersha.” Tilrey’s grin had faded, but a look of grim triumph remained. “You don’t understand. When I went to see Councillor Linnett for the second time, she told me there’s a special reason she wants me to go to Harbour—a _classified_ reason. I don’t expect she’ll accept any recusals.”

“You’re not serious? Why would there be a classified reason for _you_ to accompany a diplomatic mission? You’re . . .” _Nothing. Nothing without me. I gave you everything you have, and look how you repay me._

Tilrey stared at him from hooded eyes. “If I could tell you the reason, it wouldn’t be classified. I’m sorry, Gersha. If there were a way out of this trip that weren’t likely to land me in a cell, I’d take it.”

“No, you fucking wouldn’t.” Gersha rose too quickly and strode to the window, where snow whirled in the pearly radiance of a high-summer white night. His head whirled, too, with possibilities and fears.

“Don’t lie to me, Rishka. I know this trip is something you’ve wanted for years, maybe your whole life.” _And I wanted to take it with you. We were both so excited._ He did quick calculations of risk in his head. He would have to watch Tilrey the entire time in Harbour—like a hawk. Hadn’t Tilrey implied that his Dissident activities were limited to spying in the Council? But Gersha couldn’t rely on that; no, he couldn’t let himself be taken in again.

“I trust Albertine not to put you in a position where you can do too much damage,” he said at last. “She knows you had one arrest for mild Dissident activity in your adolescence, and she’s not stupid. But if you push the boundaries in any way, I _will_ tell her about you. You understand?”

“So I’m on house arrest.”

Tilrey’s tone was poisonous, but Gersha could hear the pain in it—the disappointment. It would have been so much easier, and such a relief, to be able to dismiss everything between them as a lie. To tell himself that Tilrey had been deceiving him, and he was the only one being ripped apart by this moment.

But he knew better.

He wheeled back around, straightening with as much dignity as he could muster. “In a manner of speaking, yes. You know I’ll be watching your every move from now on.”

Tilrey was on his feet now, too, arms crossed and eyes like a blast of cold air. “I suppose it was Dartán,” he said. “He watches me, too. He came to you. What did you tell him?”

“Nothing.” Gersha’s tears were swelling again; he was inexpressibly glad he’d managed to maintain his composure throughout that hateful interview in his office. “I assured him I’d look into the matter, but I had the utmost trust in you, and he needn’t concern himself with my affairs any further, because I was quite capable of taking care of them.”

“Good.” Tilrey’s eyes didn’t soften.

And for the first time he could remember, the only thing Gersha wanted was not to have to look at Tilrey anymore.

“You are not on house arrest,” he said, his whole body stiff with the effort of shaping the words, “because my home is no longer your home. I may not be able to turn you in, but I also can’t—”

“I understand.” The room was a blur again, but Gersha could hear Tilrey’s voice retreating, halfway to the door. “I’ll get my things now, Fir, and go to my assigned dorm.”

_Don’t go. Please._ A distant blizzard roared in Gersha’s ears, and for an instant the world spun madly around him. When he came back to himself, he was on his hands and knees, shuddering, his forehead pressed to the carpet. And Tilrey’s voice was above him, saying, “Don’t do this, love. You don’t need to.”

Those strong hands caught his and pulled him up into an embrace, both of them kneeling. Gersha buried his face against Tilrey’s chest, feeling the distant thud of his heart, and held on as tight as he could.

They stayed like that for . . . ten minutes? An hour? Gersha had no idea. His tears dried, sticky on his cheeks. Tilrey’s breath moved his hair. Outside, a wind began to howl. Neither spoke a word.

Then, as if by mutual agreement, they let each other go and stood up, face-to-face.

Gersha’s voice came out thin and smothered as if he’d been shouting for hours, arguing with Tilrey or himself.

“You need to go now. Because if you stay, if you touch me again, I’ll do something that will make me hate myself, and then—and then I might do something worse. To you or to myself. So please, if you care about either of us, if you care about your cause—go. When I see you tomorrow in the Sector, we’ll act like this never happened.”

He closed his eyes and waited for what felt like no more than a blink, focusing on each inhale and exhale as if breathing had become a task that required his conscious attention. When he opened his eyes again, Tilrey was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was a hard scene to write! But I hope it's clear these two aren't ready to let each other go. There will be tenderness and make-up sex in their future, just not immediately. :)
> 
> Next on the menu is a short (probably?) story where we see Tilrey's reaction to what just happened, and then the longer trip to Harbour story. I'm excited about doing some more worldbuilding. Thanks again for reading!!!


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